The Devil You Know
by Eligent
Summary: The team has to find a serial killer who has escaped from prison, but McGee becomes more than a little personally involved in the case as his past catches up with him and forces him to reveal that which he has kept secret since childhood.
1. Chapter 1

**The Devil You Know**

**by Eligent**

**A/N:** I started writing this story back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth… at least, that's what it feels like. Let's just say this story and I have had an on-again-off-again relationship for several years now. When this story was first born, very little was known about McGee's background, and it was implied that his childhood had been more or less happy. Of course, the show has since then supplied us with more details of McGee's family. Some I have been able to incorporate in the story – others, not so much. So let's just go ahead and call it AU-ish and be done with it. Takes place somewhere around season 7 or 8, before the team meets or hears anything about anyone in McGee's family, besides Sarah. Happy reading! Hope it strikes your fancy.

xxx

"I love living in D.C." Ziva exclaimed as she exited the elevator and greeted her yawning teammates cheerfully, unwinding her knitted scarf from around her neck. "I love being able to buy coffee at four in the morning."

Tony looked at her with bleary eyes, his hair still tousled, his chin a little scruffy. He had obviously had to forgo his morning shower. "Easy for you to say," he complained. "Do you ever sleep past four anyway? Me, I prefer my beauty sleep over easy accessible coffee. What could possibly be so important that they have to call us in at four in the morning?" He yawned widely, not bothering to cover his mouth.

"There's nothing on the news," McGee said, absentmindedly rubbing his eyes while surfing the major news outlets' web pages, then resting his chin in his hand. "So it can't be that big, can it?"

"Maybe all the reporters are still asleep," Tony yawned again. "Lucky bastards. Where's the bossman? He's the one who woke us up; shouldn't he have beaten us here?"

"I did, DiNozzo," Gibbs said, bounding down the stairs from the top floor, as always annoyingly alert for this time of night. He stopped at his desk and looked at them, not bothering with flares or dramatics. "Dennis Langston has escaped from prison."

Tony gave a long, surprised whistle, sitting up straight, suddenly looking wide awake. "The Cowboy? Are you serious? That _is_ big."

"Dennis Langston?" Ziva asked, confused. "The Cowboy? Who is that? I've never heard of him."

"He was a national nightmare 20 years ago," Tony started.

"Twenty-two," McGee interjected quietly, looking stunned. "It was 22 years ago. In 1989."

"Whatever," Tony continued casually. "He's one of the most notorious serial killers this country has ever known. He raped and murdered 13 young women and teenage girls at Alameda Naval Air Station in California. The case went unsolved for six months and when he was finally caught it turned out he was a teenager. He had barely even turned 18. Was quite a shock and made headlines for months. You know; where were the parents, where was the school, who is really responsible, all that crap. He ended up in maximum security prison for life, several lifetimes actually. If he's escaped that means someone has screwed up royally somewhere. Heads are gonna roll and the press is gonna have a field day."

"Why was he called the Cowboy?" Ziva asked, curiously.

"He always wore spurs," Gibbs said grimly. "To kick his victims with."

"Ouch," Ziva said. "How was he caught last time?"

"Someone turned him in," Tony said, frowning as he tried to recall all the details. "His brother, I think. At least someone in that family had a moral backbone. Took his sweet time about it, though. Thirteen murders… Are we really lead team on this, Boss? Shouldn't it be the FBI? Prison escapes are federal crimes."

"It'll be a joint investigation," Gibbs said. "We're meeting Fornell on site at the prison. Langston escaped from a federal prison, but the original case was a NIS case, so we still have a stake in this. The order comes directly from SECNAV."

"Why was he in prison here if the murders happened on the other side of the country?" Ziva asked.

"He's been moved around," McGee answered. "For his own safety. Wasn't too popular in prison…"

"Oh, all right," Ziva said. "So what do we do now?"

"We need to figure out the motive for his escape," Gibbs said. "If he's heading somewhere special or if he's just leaving the country to live on a beach somewhere. We need to figure out where he's going if we're going to have a chance of catching him. McGee, find Langston's family. He might try to contact them."

"Done," McGee said hoarsely.

"Good," Gibbs said as he turned around and headed towards the elevators.

"No, Boss," McGee said quickly, stopping Gibbs in midstride. "I don't mean done as in I'm going to do it really quick, I mean done as in… I'm already done. I don't actually have to do it, because… well, I've already found the family. I mean, I know the family." He could feel himself turning red as he realized he was babbling nervously. _Stop it_, he told himself sternly. This was the worst possible time to show any signs of weakness. "That is— I am the family."

Everyone turned to stare at him. He sat stock still with his hands flat on his keyboard and his eyes down, his face flushed.

"What are you talking about, Probie?" Tony asked, frowning.

McGee turned his head slightly towards his colleague, his hands curling into fists to keep them from shaking. "Denny is my brother."

For a while the silence was palpable as the rest of the team continued to stare incredulously at him.

"Your brother?" Ziva finally asked.

"As in flesh and blood, DNA-sharing, biological brother?" Tony asked.

"McGee, if this is your idea of a joke, it's not funny," Gibbs said gravelly.

McGee swallowed and licked his lips before answering. "It's not a joke, Boss. I wish it had been. But he's really—"

"Your brother?" Gibbs finished and Tim nodded. "This wasn't in your file."

"With all due respect, Boss," McGee said, looking him bravely in the eyes. "Would you let something like that show up in your file?"

"Hmph," Gibbs grunted. "I'm pulling you from the case. Go home, McGee."

McGee stood up quickly. "No sir!" he said, almost shouting. "Don't do that. Please, don't… I'm not defending Denny. I never will. He's serving several consecutive lifetimes and I'm glad for it. He doesn't belong in freedom. I want him in jail. I might be… um, emotionally involved, but there's no one more motivated than me when it comes to catching him. Please, don't shut me out."

Gibbs immediately noted the 'sir'. He had cured McGee of that habit long ago, which meant that right now he was extremely agitated and nervous. "He's your brother," he said. "I can't let you—"

"Yes, you can," McGee interrupted pleadingly. "You just have to want to. You've let us work personal cases before. Please, Gibbs. Please…" He knew he was begging, but he didn't care. He had to be allowed to stay on the case! He wouldn't be able to bear it otherwise.

"You're the one who turned him in?" Ziva asked, walking towards him but stopping before actually reaching him.

McGee flinched. He'd been so focused on Gibbs that he'd almost forgotten about his other teammates. "Yes." McGee swallowed, closing his eyes and lowering his head for a few moments as memories washed over him before he looked angrily at Tony. "And I didn't take my 'sweet time' about it. I didn't know. For the longest time, we didn't know. But it wasn't even two hours from me finding out 'til I sat at the police station." There was a clear challenge in his voice, daring Tony to mess with him.

"Sorry," Tony muttered. "I didn't know…"

"McGee," Gibbs interrupted. "We need to talk."

"Yes, sir," McGee agreed. "I just need to call my parents first. I don't want them to find out from someone else or from the news." He said it as a statement, but his eyes made it clear that he was actually asking for permission, obviously nervous about what this new revelation would mean to the other man.

"Fine," Gibbs nodded curtly. "Meet us in the garage when you're done. We're going to the prison."

"Does that mean…?" McGee asked with hope.

"Yes. If the director okays it, you can stay on the case. But you will have to toe the line meticulously. And I reserve the right to change my mind at any given time." Gibbs figured that it was probably a good idea to keep McGee close by and occupied for the time being so he didn't go maverick and went out looking for his brother alone, without backup.

"Thank you." The relief on McGee's face was obvious. He took his cell phone and walked out of earshot.

"Okay, what the hell just happened here?" Tony wondered out loud. "I can't believe that the Cowboy is Probie's brother. I can't believe we never found out before! Do you really think he can work objectively on this case, Boss?"

"Objectively?" Gibbs asked. "Not a chance. But that doesn't mean he won't do his job. Remember, this is McGee we're talking about. We'll keep an eye on him, any sign of him switching sides and we'll pull him. Besides, if Langston decides to come looking for his family, that means he'll come walking right in to our arms. I need to go brief Vance. Meet us in the garage in five minutes. We're expected at the prison."

He went up the stairs, leaving Tony and Ziva staring at each other.

xxx

Tim stared at his phone. He had pulled his parents number up from the directory and now stood with his thumb hovering over the call button, stalling. There were no words in the English language which could accurately describe how much he didn't want to make this call. He looked at his watch. 4:20 a.m. Calling his parents at this hour would scare them, but he couldn't wait any longer. He didn't want to risk someone else beating him to it, especially not some overeager reporter. He still remembered how the press had treated his parents and himself 22 years ago. For weeks they had staked out their house, called at every hour of the night, assaulted anyone who came or went to the house. And as Tim had spent a lot of time home alone during that time, he had felt like a prisoner, scared to talk to anyone until a long time after they'd moved away.

He had no idea if his father would even be at the house, more often than not he wasn't, but for the first time in many years he actually hoped that it would be his father's voice he heard when the phone was answered. His father would be shocked and angry and would raise hell and demand answers. He could deal with that. His mother would be emotional, worried and hopeful. That he wasn't so sure he could handle.

But that wasn't the only reason he hoped his father would be home. An emergency recall from an overseas conference, an inspection round of the fleet or any other kind of official duty would require an explanation, which would humiliate his father to no end and put him in an even worse mood. The admiral would not abide being embarrassed in front of his men or his peers. Tim knew that one of the reasons his father had been so hell-bent on rising through the ranks as quickly as possible was that the higher up he got, the fewer were the people who were privy to his background information, even though he had managed to get most of it classified.

Tim knew Denny's escape would open festering old wounds for his family, and especially for his father. John McGee had not taken the knowledge that his oldest son was a serial killer in good stride. In fact, once the trial was over, he had disowned Denny completely. They had moved away to start new lives, he had said and Denny had no part of their new life, so he had chosen to ignore him, pretending that Denny had never existed and he always turned into his foulest mood if he caught Tim or his wife talking about him. Tim's dad had always been rather strict and had set high standards for his children, but after the murders his father had in only a few months turned into a very cold, hard and distant man. In many ways, Denny had – alongside all his other victims – killed the father Tim had once had.

Suddenly Tim felt a surge of ret-hot anger coarse through him. This was all Denny's fault! As usual, he wasn't thinking about anyone but himself. How could he be so unbelievably selfish? Had he spared his family even so much as a glancing thought before he decided to break out? Of course, impact thinking had never been one of Denny's strong points and considering that he had ignored any attempts at keeping in touch over the last 22 years, he probably didn't even consider them family anymore. A knife twisted in Tim's gut. After everything Denny had done, and after all the time that had passed, how could that thought still hurt so much?

Suppressing all of his emotions for the time being, McGee sighed and pressed the call button. It took five signals for his father to answer.

"Hello," Admiral John McGee said groggily. "Who is this? Do you know what time it is?"

"It's me, Dad," Tim said quickly. "It's Tim. Sorry for waking you."

"Tim? What's going on?" His father sounded equal parts worried and annoyed.

In the background he could hear his mother's voice. "Is that Tim? Is he okay?"

"I'm fine, Dad," he said and then he continued quickly so he wouldn't lose courage. "It's not me. But I have some bad news. Denny has escaped from prison…" A long silence followed. "Dad, did you hear me?"

"Oh god," the admiral said with a horrified voice. "Oh my god. This can't be happening."

"John!" Tim's mother demanded. "Oh god, what? What happened to Tim?"

"Tim's fine, Alice," the admiral tried to calm his wife. "It's Dennis." Tim could hear the thickness in his father's voice. That was a name he hadn't uttered in many years.

"Dennis?" Alice sounded confused and afraid. "What about Dennis?"

"He's escaped," the admiral told her.

"What are you talking about? Let me talk to Tim." Alice took the phone from her husband. "Honey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Mom," Tim promised.

"What happened to Dennis?"

Tim swallowed nervously. "Somehow he has managed to escape from prison, but I don't know anything more yet. I only just found out. We're going to the prison now to investigate and try to figure out where Denny's going."

"What? Are you on the case, Tim?" his mother asked, surprised. "I really don't think that's such a good idea."

"It's my job, Mom," Tim said. "It'll be fine. Don't worry."

"No, it won't!" his mother said angrily. "How can Gibbs possibly condone this? You always made him seem like such a reliable man. Or didn't you tell him who Denny is to you?"

"Of course I told him, Mom," Tim said more harshly than he had intended. "But Gibbs is my boss, he has to do whatever is best for the case and right now, me working on this is what is best for the case."

"But honey, last time-"

"Last time I was a kid," McGee interrupted her curtly. "This is different. Besides, what else am I gonna do? Take a vacation and let the others do this without me? Sit on the sideline, not knowing what's going on… that's not gonna make me feel any better. Besides, I knew Denny. I might be able to figure out how he's thinking, and where he's going. They need me."

"All right, Tim. If you say so," Alice said doubtingly. "Do you… do you think he might try to contact us?"

Tim closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was what he'd been afraid of. There was a touch of hope in his mother's voice, and he didn't like it. "Mom… Don't do this to yourself. He's refused to talk to you for 22 years, why would he start now? And even if he did, nothing good could possibly come out of it. Besides, the most likely scenario is that he's making a beeline for the border. But if he does contact you we need to know immediately. I'm gonna put up surveillance on your phone and e-mail."

"All right," Alice said reluctantly. "What about Sarah?"

Tim snorted. "If I put a trace on her phone she'll never talk to me again. But I suppose I don't have a choice. I can probably do it in a way so she'll never notice, and I'll have Abby monitoring it. She won't tell me anything that's not about the case."

"That's not what I mean," Alice said. "What do we tell her?"

"Nothing," Tim said quickly. "We don't say anything unless we absolutely have to. Ask dad, you know he'll agree with me. We've kept her out of it this far, there's no reason to change the tune now. If we're lucky, Denny will be back in custody within an hour, and then Sarah will never know."

"If you think that's best," Alice said hesitantly.

"It's going to be okay, Mom," Tim said gently. "Don't let this affect you too much. I doubt he'll get very far or that you will have to be involved at all. If we're lucky we'll find him before the media even wakes up. No one's going to find you; you're not the story this time. It's gonna be about the prison and its security and about NCIS and FBI and our manhunt. No one's gonna bother you." He really hoped he was predicting the right future. Last time the media had destroyed their lives almost as much as Denny had.

"That's not what worries me, Tim," Alice said. "I've survived the press and the stares and the pointing fingers before. I just don't want you and Sarah to get hurt again. And I don't understand how you think you'll be able to participate in a manhunt for your brother without getting hurt. You're too sensitive."

"I'm gonna be fine, Mom," Tim said again. "Listen, I've got to go now, but I'll call you as soon as I know anything. And if you hear anything from Denny, or if anyone else bothers you, then you call me, okay? Right away."

"Please, be careful, sweetheart! Remember that we love you! Call us soon. And often!"

"I love you too, Mom. I'll talk to you real soon, I promise."

xxx

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Teeny-tiny spoilers for _Twisted Sister _and _Angel of Death_

xxx

As usual, Gibbs barged into the director's office without knocking. And, as usual, Vance didn't even bat an eye.

"Yes, Gibbs?"

"Complications."

Vance looked up from his paperwork and looked at the man standing in front of him, noting the scowl on his face. "Already?"

Gibbs grimaced. "As it turns out, Langston's related to McGee. They're brothers."

The toothpick fell out of Vance's mouth as he momentarily lost his composure. He quickly collected himself. "Send him home," he ordered, as he picked the toothpick up from the desk and started twirling it between his thumb and index finger.

"No." Gibbs shook his head.

Now it was Vance who was scowling. "Gibbs, this is serious. Do you understand what the ramifications are going to be if we let McGee chase after his own brother? SECNAV will have my head!"

"Do you understand the ramifications if we don't?" Gibbs asked coldly. "He needs this. And we need him. He's going to know things we could never figure out without him. He has valuable insights into Langston's mind."

"Which I'm sure he will be more than willing to share with us without being an active case agent," Vance said patiently. "McGee is a very honorable man, he would never hurt a case because of petulancy."

"Do you think you can tell me something about my man that I don't already know?" Gibbs said angrily. Then he sighed and rubbed his brow. "You didn't see him down there, Leon. He had just gotten what must've been some of the most devastating news of his life thrown in his face without warning, but he stood up for himself and his family. As I understand it, he was somehow instrumental in capturing his brother the last time, and I could tell he's dedicated to do it again. There's no way that he's not going accept sitting quietly on the sidelines, Leon. If we cut him off, he'll most likely go rouge on us. He'll be out there looking for Langston, no matter what."

Vance still shook his head. "I know you guys have worked personal cases before—"

"You always did," Gibbs interrupted.

Vance glared at him, "But this is beyond reasonable. It's too high profile."

Gibbs slammed his hand down on the desk. "Then you had better find another team, because this just got very personal for all of us. Every minute Langston is out there will be more and more painful for McGee, and we don't want him to hurt. You will not find another team more dedicated to finding him."

"Gibbs, be reasonable," Vance said. "Think about what this could do to the agency. If this goes sour, our credibility will be void."

"Your first priority should be for your men," Gibbs said through gritted teeth.

"I agree, it should," Vance nodded. "But that's not how the world works, and you know it… Do you really think this is the best thing for McGee? Who knows what old wounds this is going to open?"

"I know it is," Gibbs said with certainty.

"And you will keep a close eye on him, I suppose?"

Gibbs nodded, grim-faced. "The closest. If I see any sign that he's turning into a liability I'll chain him up in my basement until it's over. We take care of our own, Leon."

"I don't like this," Vance said.

"Do you think I do?" Gibbs asked incredulously. "Do you think I like that fact that another one of my agents apparently grew up in hell? I wish I had known, Leon. I could've done things differently."

"I'm guessing McGee didn't want us to know," Vance said. "He probably didn't want to seem weak or untrustworthy. And I for one am very interested in knowing how it's possible that we didn't know. We take extensive family history before we give our agents security clearance. Do you think he hacked his own file? Because that would be grounds for disciplinary actions."

Gibbs shrugged. "I wouldn't put it past him. But, remember who his father is. This could very well have been scrubbed from higher up before McGee even applied for FLETC. I prefer not to speculate on it."

"I suppose," Vance said, rubbing his neck. "But I'm going to have to bring it up the ladder now. At least to SECNAV. But he shouldn't want to hurt McGee or the admiral either. Both of them are very valuable assets to this country."

"So I can keep him active?" Gibbs wanted clarification.

Vance sighed. "Yes. You take care of McGee, and I'll run interference with the brass. I just hope it doesn't come back and bite us in the ass. But he is your responsibility."

"He always is."

xxx

"It's one hell of a secret to keep," McGee could hear Tony telling Ziva as he walked into the garage, their whispers carrying through the echoing concrete space. "I can't believe he pulled it off. We never suspected a thing."

"Oh, I don't know," Ziva said. "A secret like this I would guard very closely, too."

"The whole murder business, sure," Tony agreed. "But we never heard so much as a sigh about him even having a brother. It's like he's scrubbed his whole childhood. Never a statement like 'my brother and I used to wait up for Santa' or 'my brother taught me that when I was four' or anything like that. No one can guard their tongue that well!"

"No wonder he was so upset that time Sarah was suspected of murder," Ziva mused. "It must've been his worst nightmare repeating itself."

"Only Sarah was innocent," McGee said as he approached them. "Denny wasn't."

Ziva and Tony stopped talking and looked guiltily at him, for once embarrassed to have been caught speculating about their teammate's private life. Normally the teasing was a fun pastime, but suddenly it was deadly serious.

"Where's Gibbs?" McGee asked, pretending he hadn't noticed the uncomfortable looks on their faces.

"Still with the director," Tony answered.

"Right," McGee said, suddenly remembering that he might still be kicked off the investigation. His head had been a mess for the last 20 minutes. It was hard to believe that it had only been 20 minutes since his life was turned completely upside down.

Even though he had left the events of his childhood firmly behind him and moved on with his life, not a day went by when he didn't think about it and about his brother. That year had been a nightmare without end. Tim was still sometimes surprised he had survived it with his mind intact. And now he knew that he would have to relive it. Everyone would have questions, everyone would want details. And because of the case he would be obliged to give it to them, whether he liked it or not. Every last detail that could possibly give them a chance to find Denny. Nothing would be irrelevant to Gibbs. And Tony was much too curious to not keep asking until he knew everything. He was probably pissed that he hadn't know before. Ziva would probably be more sympathetic, her family history wasn't exactly pristine either. McGee dreaded having to tell them. When they moved away from California, they moved away from everyone who had known who they were and who Denny was to them. They had stopped talking about it and they'd stopped talking about Denny. It would be hard to talk about it again; it had been so long since he had had to formulate his thoughts on the subject into actual words.

But most of all he dreaded his friends' reactions. The last time around he'd lost all of his friends, many of his relatives and his whole life. Not to mention his brother. That still hurt most of all.

"Are you okay?" Ziva asked, walking towards him, putting a hand on his arm.

"Sure," he nodded uneasily.

"Listen," Tony said. "I'm sorry about what I said before. I didn't know—"

"It's okay," McGee said quickly, cutting him off. "You weren't supposed to know."

"For what it's worth, I think you were brave," Tony said. "Not everyone stands up for what's right when there's a loved one involved. We've seen that a million times."

"People were dying, Tony," McGee shrugged uneasily. "There was nothing else I could do."

"You were 13, right?" Ziva asked, having counted the years.

"Twelve, actually," Tim corrected her.

"Wow," Tony said. "When I was 12, my biggest problem was getting a hold of the latest copy of Batman and finding a girl who had gotten over the cootie-phase. How did you find out what was happening?"

"I saw—" McGee started, but then stopped again, rubbing his chin. "Listen guys, I know I'm gonna have to tell the whole story, whether I like it or not, but I think it'll be easier if I wait until we're all present, so I don't have to go over it again and again. I'll answer any questions you have then, okay? It's really not important right now anyway."

"Sure," Ziva said, exchanging a worried look with Tony. "That sounds fair."

The elevator opened and Gibbs got out. "Boss," McGee said immediately. "Am I still in?"

"Yeah," Gibbs said, not letting on how much he'd had to fight Vance for it. "But Vance or I can veto you out at any time, with no protests."

"Understood, boss. You won't regret it."

"Uh-huh," Gibbs said. "See that I don't. Now get into the car, we're late. Uh uh uh," he stopped Tony with look. "McGee gets the front seat."

When they were on the road Gibbs said to McGee; "You have got some serious explaining to do, McGee."

"I know, boss," McGee said, looking down at his hands. "I just don't know where to start. It's a long story, and I know you all have a lot of questions. I just want to assure you that I'm not going to get all nostalgic or side with Denny on anything like that. Like I said; what he did was so utterly wrong. He belongs in prison and I want him back there. As for my family… Denny basically ruined our lives. Emotional trauma aside; we lost our home, our friends, much of our family. It took a long time for us to put it behind us and I just hate to think what Denny breaking out of prison is going to do to my parents. It's going to open a lot of wounds, and I just can't condone that. But most of all I'm afraid what he might do now that he's on the run. He has nothing to lose, nothing at all. And he's a compulsive serial killer who has been denied his compulsion for more than 20 years. What if he starts killing again? How many more families are going to get their lives ruined by him? We have to find him, boss, and the sooner the better."

Gibbs grunted an affirmation. It was no less than he had expected from his conscientious and compassionate agent.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, until Tony suddenly stuck his head into the front seat. "Hey, wait a minute! I just realized that you don't have the same last name as your brother. What's that about?"

"We changed it," McGee said somewhat guarded, pretty sure he knew how this was going to play out. "When everything was over, we needed a new start. So, when we moved from California we changed our names."

Tony chuckled with glee. "Wait, wait, wait," he said. "Let me get this straight. Timothy McGee is a _taken _name? You _chose_ Tim McGee as your name?"

"Yeah, so what?" McGee said defensively. "McGee was my mother's maiden name, so it was a natural choice."

"Yeah, okay," Tony relented. "But Tim? What was your name before if you thought that was a step up? Deuteronomy? Gaylord?"

"It's not important, Tony," Tim sighed.

"Gunther? Eugene? Jebediah?" Tony continued guessing.

"So what was Sarah's name?" Ziva asked, ignoring Tony completely.

"Almanzo? Lancelot? Bjorn?" Tony went on.

"It was Sarah," McGee said.

"Whitney? Muriel? Tracy?"

"Sarah?" Ziva asked. "She didn't have to change her first name?"

"Milton? Mervyn? Milhouse?" Tony was relentless.

"We didn't see the point," McGee explained. "She was just a little kid and Sarah's a common enough name. Mom and dad didn't change their first names either, there was no need."

"But you changed your first name anyway?" Ziva asked.

"You weren't called Jethro, were you?" Tony asked with a smirk in his voice.

McGee sighed heavily and turned towards Tony. "It was John. Okay, Tony? Can you just drop it?"

"John?" Tony sounded disappointed. "Just John?"

"Yes, just John. Or Johnny, really. Most people called me Johnny. And what's wrong with Tim, anyway?"

"Absolutely nothing," Ziva said, patting him on the shoulder. "So you just took your mother's maiden name? That's not much of a cover, especially if your parents kept their first names. Didn't you think your brother would be able to figure that out?"

"We didn't change names to hide from Denny," McGee explained. "He was in jail, he couldn't hurt us anymore. No, we changed our names mostly to hide from the media and to protect us from rumors. At first we just moved to another city in California, but our history followed us. Trust me, starting a new school as the serial killer's brother is not a pleasant experience. So we moved across country and started over under a new name and suddenly, we were welcomed with open arms into our new community."

Tony snapped his fingers. "Aha! So that's why you failed Abby's homemade polygraph! It wasn't faulty; you really _were_ lying about your name."

Tim just sighed and turned away from him.

Ziva shot angry daggers at Tony, slapping him hard on the arm. "John's a common enough name too," she remarked, turning her attention back on McGee. "Why did you change it?"

"Yeah," Tony said. "I don't get it. Isn't your dad's name John?"

"Yes," McGee said. "I was named after him. It's an old family tradition."

"So why did you change it?" Tony said.

"I just didn't want it anymore," McGee said, leaving it at that.

xxx

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

Despite his teammates' many questions, Tim hadn't said much in the way of an explanation during the ride. He knew Gibbs was a bit irritated with his tightlipped attitude, but the truth was that he hadn't been able to organize his thoughts in a fashion that was fit for sharing yet. He might look deceptively collected on the outside, but inside his head, it was all a jumble. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to his teammates, he just didn't know how yet. But he knew that it needed to be done.

Tim looked morosely at the huge stone walls and barbed wire fences as they turned into the prison parking lot. He hadn't even known that Denny was kept at a prison so close to home. Not that it would've mattered to him anyway. He'd stopped keeping track after the first move, which was when he had moved away from home to go to college. He knew his mother still got the information whenever he was moved, but she never forwarded it to him, and he had no interest in knowing anymore. His relationship with Denny had been over for a long time.

Even at this early hour the parking lot was full, but with law enforcement vehicles. A prison break of such a high-profile prisoner rendered a lot of manpower. Luckily there were no news vans yet. McGee was relieved. Every moment of investigation they got without media attention was a blessing. This was going to blow up soon enough.

Fornell was standing with the leader of the dog squad, studying a large map of the area. Seven dogs were barking and pulling at their handlers, eager to get going. "Nice of you to join us, Gibbs," Fornell said. "Your coffee's gone cold."

"Complications on the way," Gibbs said and McGee flinched. He wasn't going to tell everyone, was he? But Gibbs didn't elaborate. Instead he picked up the coffee mug, took a sip, grimaced at the taste and said, "So, what do we know?"

"We know he's been gone a few hours," Fornell said. "He was present for the ten o'clock bed check, but was gone at the two o'clock bed check. The prison is in lockdown and is being turned over from top to bottom. So far, we have no idea how he got out or even if he got out. There are still areas inside that haven't been checked, so fingers crossed that he's hiding in a closet somewhere. But not bloody likely, huh? I've got agents going through security tapes. The outside search has only covered a one-mile radius yet, but we're expanding as we speak and as you can see, the dogs are about to go out. No sign, as of yet. Maybe your guys can go check out his cell, see if you can find anything there."

"Sure," Gibbs said, and nodded his head at his team to get moving. McGee, Ziva and Tony headed for the trunk of the car, to gather their equipment.

"We also need to find Langston's family," Fornell continued. "He may be trying to contact someone from his past."

"McGee's already talked to them," Gibbs said, his eyes still glued to the map, "And Vance has sent a couple of agents to keep an eye on their house."

"He did?" McGee turned back, surprised and a little annoyed with himself for not thinking of that before.

Gibbs gave him an irritated look. "Of course."

"What did they say?" Fornell asked.

"Who?" McGee asked confused.

"Who?" Fornell frowned at him. "The Langstons, of course, boy. Who do you think?"

"Oh, right" McGee shook himself out of the stupor and formulated a very neutral response, deliberately not explaining that they hadn't been the Langstons for 20 years. "They'll contact us if they hear anything from him, and they have agreed to us putting a trace on their phone."

Fornell grunted in confirmation and Gibbs motioned for McGee to go with Ziva and Tony. McGee escaped gratefully. He hadn't lied to Fornell, but he hadn't told the whole truth either. Would Gibbs? Was this to be his faith now? To look upon all the people in his life and wonder if they would find out, when they would find out, how they found out, and what they would do when they found out. What would Fornell do?

It reminded him of the first few years after Denny's trial and how he had felt then. How he had been afraid to meet new people, afraid to make friends, afraid to reach out to others. Afraid to talk about himself, closely guarding his thoughts and feelings. Craving acceptance and togetherness but expecting nothing but scorn and distrust, always with a feeling of shame lingering in his gut. It had been lonely years, before he came to realize that he had self-worth, that he was more than just a serial killer's brother, that people could actually care about _him_. That his brother's actions weren't his.

But now he could feel his old insecurities creeping back up on him. Would the people he cared about still be able to see him as him, or would the knowledge of his brother's foul acts forever mar their perception of him? Would they think of him differently? Would they still trust him? Would they still like him? How many friends would he lose this time around?

xxx

Denny's cell was small and depressing, just as McGee had expected. Two baseball posters hung on a wall and Tim noted that his brother was still loyal to the same team as when he was a teenager. On a shelf stood about a dozen books, mostly mystery novels. Tim's heart skipped a beat when he noticed that 'Deep Six' was one of them. Denny couldn't possibly know that he was hiding behind the pseudonym, could he? Then he found a legal pad with only a few sheets of paper left. He wondered what Denny had been writing. It wasn't letters to home, he knew that much. He bagged it to let Abby scan the imprint on the top sheet. Maybe that could tell them what he'd been writing lately.

"He seems very neat," Ziva commented as she stuck her hand into the pillowcase, looking for hidden goods. "Everything in its place."

The guard who was escorting them, a man called Zander, agreed. "He's very anal about things like that. Everything has to be in order, in the correct position. I mean, he's got what, 12 books over there? Still, he's alphabetized them. Like they would be hard to find otherwise."

"Family trait maybe," Tony smiled and bumped McGee's elbow. McGee sent him a scalding look, and for once Tony shrank back. "Sorry," he mumbled.

McGee picked up a shoe box from under the bed and opened it. It was full of pictures of women. Some just normal headshots and vacation pictures, many of the more scantily clad version. He scanned a couple of layers quickly, but couldn't find any of Denny's victims among the women. "What's this?" he asked.

"His groupies," Zander said with disdain. "I can't stand women like that. Who in their right mind throws themselves at someone who's in prison for killing women?"

Tony leaned over McGee's shoulder. "Wow, there's a lot of them."

"He's had 22 years to collect," McGee said quietly.

"We will have to check them out," Ziva said. "He could be planning to hide with one of them."

"Where's the rest?" Tim asked, turning to Zander.

"The rest what?" Zander asked.

"The letters," Tim said. "They can't all have just sent photos, can they? Is he keeping in contact with any of them?"

"Oh, he never keeps the letters," Zander said. "Just the photos. The letters go straight into the trash. He's never had any outgoing post either, so he doesn't respond to any of them, at least not since he came here. I doubt he even reads them."

"But he keeps the photos," McGee noted.

"Souvenirs, maybe?" Ziva theorized.

"Or company," Tony suggested, holding up a photo, checking the back for a name. "This one's a real looker, too bad she's obviously insane!"

Tony pulled a larger cardboard box out from under the bed. Opening it, he discovered that it was full of files and legal briefs. He started leafing through them. "It's court files," he said. "From his trial. Was he looking for an appeal maybe?"

"Why escape if he was planning an appeal?" Ziva asked.

"Maybe he wanted to do it, but realized it was a lost cause," Tony said. "So he decided to escape instead."

"He had those with him when he came here a few years ago," Zander said. "But he's never made a move to appeal."

"We'll read through them," Tony said. "Maybe he's been making notes in the margins or something."

"The trash can is empty," Ziva said, nudging it with her foot.

"This ward had cell inspections yesterday," Zander explained. "Many of the inmates clean before inspections; a clean cell is worth a few extra merit points. And like I said, Langston's anal."

"Where do they empty their trash?" Tony asked.

Zander pointed down the corridor at a garbage chute. "In there. Ends up in a bin in the basement. But it's emptied out every night."

"And where does it go after that?" Ziva asked.

"Incinerator," Zander said. "We've got a closed system for our trash here. We don't send much out, just a bit of recycling from the kitchens."

"Show me," Ziva said, leading Zander away, giving McGee and Tony a chance to speak privately.

"So what do you think?" Tony asked.

"I don't know," McGee said, looking around again. "He seems very orderly. And isolated. There isn't much personality in here."

"Yeah, I can see that too," Tony said. "What about your special insight? What's here that shouldn't be? Or, what's missing."

"I don't know, Tony," McGee said shrugging his shoulders. "I'm not seeing anything you're not seeing."

"Really? Because I thought… you know."

McGee smiled a little sadly. "I don't know this man, Tony. In this cell lives a 40-year-old man who's spent more than half his life in jail. My brother was an 18-year-old boy who liked sports and video games. There's no way to compare them. He's as much a stranger to me as he is to you."

"You haven't seen him since then?" Tony sounded surprised. "You haven't kept in touch at all?" Not that Tony blamed him, it just didn't sound like the Tim McGee he knew. No matter how horrible the crimes his brother had committed were, McGee wasn't the type of guy to turn his back on someone he loved. He was usually loyal to a fault.

"He cut us out," McGee said, shrugging his shoulders again, feeling uncomfortable. "He refused any contact with any of us. Dad never wanted any contact anyway, he just wanted to forget that the whole thing ever happened. I wanted it in the beginning, when everything was still fresh. I wanted answers back then. I wanted my brother back. But I grew out of it when I got older. Mom tried the longest, still tries every now and then I think, but he's never answered any letters and he's never put any of us on his approved visitor's list. The last time I saw him was the day I took the stand at his trial and testified against him. Though he didn't really look at me much. Maybe if he had made an effort…"

_He remembered sitting in the too hot room, wearing a blazer that was just a little too big, which his mother had bought for him for Elena's funeral, and a blue tie that was Denny's. He didn't like the way everybody was looking at him. It felt like there was a sea of people in front of him, everyone staring at him. The jury, the attorneys, the judge, his father, the victims' families and all the other onlookers. Even Oliver's mom and dad were there. And Harlan, of course. And everyone was looking at him. Except for Denny. Denny kept his eyes firmly on the table. His attorney had given him paper and a pen, and he was doodling. His hair had grown so much that it was hanging down over his eyes so he couldn't see his brother's face at all._

_They were asking him questions. What did you see—? What happened then—? Are you absolutely sure—? How did you—? When—? Who—? How—? What—? Where—? He answered them all with a dry throat, shaky voice and sweating, itching palms. Harlan was giving him encouraging smiles the whole time, but he was too nervous to see them._

_When it was over he went and sat with his father, pressing himself up against his side, sitting right behind Denny. His father put an arm around him. "You did good, son," he said quietly. _

_A few minutes later, the judge called a recess. Around them, the room slowly started to empty. He stood up too, his hands clutching the barrier that separated the audience from the court floor. "Denny?" he called, but his brother didn't turn around. "Denny, please!" He reached out a hand, intending to pull on Denny's arm so that he would look at him, but his father caught his hand before he could make contact._

_"Come on, Johnny," he said. "Let's go."_

_"But—I—" But his father had a hand on his back, ushering him out of the room. Every few steps, he looked back at Denny, but he never turned around._

"Tim?" Tony asked. "Are you okay?"

Tim blinked and returned to reality. "Yeah, of course. Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about," Tony said. "This whole situation must've thrown you for quite a loop."

"Yeah," Tim agreed. "It's got my head's spinning, that's for sure. We should just bag everything, bring it back for Abby. Maybe she can find something."

"Yeah, sure," Tony said, pulling more evidence bags out of his kit. "I'll start over there."

xxx

A few hours later Tony and Tim walked into Abby's lab, arms laden with Denny's belongings, their ears automatically adjusting to the sound level of the music.

"Hi boys!" she greeted them cheerful. "How was prison?"

Tony put down a plastic box full of evidence bags on her work bench. "Oh, you know. Gray and drab. Picked you up some souvenirs though."

"Lovely!" Abby exclaimed. "You know, this is going to be interesting. I couldn't believe it when I heard on the car radio that the Cowboy had escaped. And then I got here and heard that we were on the case. We're going to make history! I mean, I remember when this was going on, it made headlines for weeks! This is going to be so big and we get to be a part of it." She was practically bouncing with excitement.

McGee was confused for a moment, but then he suddenly realized that Abby had no idea that Denny was his brother. At first he couldn't figure out why, as rumors usually travelled a mile a minute at NCIS and Abby had ears like saucers when it came to gossip, but then he remembered that it had been 4 a.m. when he told his team, and the bullpen had been empty. The only other person who knew was director Vance, and he didn't gossip. But it would be out soon enough, and Abby deserved to find out from him.

"Uh, Abby…" he started uncertainly. "There's something you should know."

"Yes?" She looked expectantly at him.

"Denny… that is the Cowboy, as you call him, well, he's kind of… we're…" For some reason he was more nervous about telling Abby than he had been to tell Gibbs. Probably because Abby was always so expressive and immediate with her reactions.

"Just spit it out, McGee," Tony said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Like ripping a bandage."

McGee looked at Abby, who was now looking at him rather worriedly. "Denny is my brother, Abby. My older brother."

Abby's eyes grew impossibly big. "No way… Are you serious? Big brother? As in family?"

McGee nodded nervously, waiting for the inevitable.

"Wow, McGee," Abby said reverently. "I can't believe I never knew you are a middle child. This explains so much!"

xxx

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

McGee found that it took him a while to extract himself from Abby after dropping that bombshell on her. She had a million questions, of course, but she rarely waited for the answer before either asking a new question or spurting out homespun theories. Tony had to remind her twice that processing the evidence was a matter of urgency, before she shooed them out of the lab, acting like they were the ones disturbing her in her work.

Gibbs and Ziva were in the bullpen, Ziva was just hanging up the phone.

"Anything good?" McGee asked her hopefully.

"Perhaps," Ziva said. "A farmer about two miles from the prison has reported that his car has been stolen. There's a BOLO out and all the roadblocks have been notified. If we're lucky, he will be apprehended quickly." She shot him a kind smile.

McGee appreciated the attempt, but he wasn't about to let his friend make a fool out of herself just to appease him. "Thanks, Ziva," he said. "But you know just as well as I do that a stolen car and that kind of head start means that Denny is most likely miles away already. It's looking more and more probable that he was long gone from the area before the alarm even sounded."

Ziva frowned at him. "Don't be negative, McGee. It does not suit you."

"Does anyone have any idea of how he got out yet?" Tony asked, sitting down at his desk.

Ziva shook her head. "I talked to prison security while you were emptying out Denny's cell. They are working on it, but there is nothing obvious. No holes in the wall or anything. They have him on camera walking through a door he is not supposed to have access to, but they don't know how, yet. But they said he was a model prisoner. Hardly ever in fights, and even when he was he was never the instigator. He kept to himself, no obvious gang or group affiliations. He hasn't spent a day in isolation in 15 years. Worked in the kitchen and the infirmary. Never any trouble."

"So basically, they stopped watching him that closely," Tony concluded.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Ziva said, nodding. "He didn't make any trouble, so they didn't expect any trouble. Really came back to bite them, huh? Is he smart?" She turned to McGee who blinked in surprise.

"What?"

"You are smart," Ziva explained her thinking, "Went to college while you were still in diapers, right? Well, is he the same? How elaborate an escape plan is feasible here?"

"Oh," McGee nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, I suppose he was—is smart. His grades were awful his senior year, but that was because he didn't even try. Too busy murdering people, I suppose. But I would say he is smart."

"Hey, focus," Gibbs was noticeably irritated. "I don't care how he got out. That's the prison's problem. I care about getting him back in! We're leaving the area around the prison to the FBI, they can do the legwork. We are figuring out where he's going." He looked expectantly at McGee.

McGee just shrugged. "I couldn't tell you, Boss."

"Does he know where you live?" Ziva asked. "Would he come looking for you?"

Again McGee shrugged, pulling a face. "I doubt it. We haven't kept in touch. He probably knows where mom and dad live since mom still writes him now and then, but I don't really see any reason why he would be interested in us."

"Revenge, maybe?" Ziva speculated. "You did put him in jail." She could immediately see that the thought shocked McGee.

"No!" he protested loudly. "He would never… I mean, he was probably very angry with me, and yeah, maybe he even blamed me, but he wouldn't hurt me. I know he wouldn't hurt me."

"Are you sure?" Tony asked, looking a little concerned. "You said it yourself, you don't know him anymore. And we know he's prone to violence."

"But he's my brother," McGee said, brows furrowed. "I just can't imagine…"

Gibbs looked thoughtfully at his agent. He had been expecting this. He had known that McGee wouldn't be able to stay as emotionally detached from the case as he had claimed he would, it wasn't in the younger man's nature. "You be careful, McGee," he warned. "I've seen brothers do worse to each other. You can't predict what will happen if it comes down to a situation where you are the only thing standing between him and freedom. And you have to mentally prepare yourself to aim a gun at him, with the intention of shooting to kill, if worse comes to worst. If you can't do that, you will be a danger to yourself, the team, and anyone else who might be present. If you can't do that, I will dismiss you here and now. "

McGee swallowed hard. "I know, Boss," he said slowly, processing his thoughts. "I still don't think he would hurt me, but you're right, I shouldn't take it for granted. If I'm the one who has to do it, I can and will take him down." _After all, I've done it before, _he thought. "I promise, Boss," McGee said, remembering the woman he had seen die at his brother's hand. He would never let that happen to anyone ever again. Not if it was in his power to stop it. "I won't put you in danger. I would never do that to you."

Gibbs nodded curtly. "See that you don't."

McGee turned around to go back to his desk and saw that Tony had pulled up a picture of a man on the plasma screen. It took him a few steps and a few moments before he registered who it was. He stopped midstride, and just stared.

"McGee?" Ziva asked after a few moments, when he still hadn't moved.

"That's him, isn't it?" McGee asked rhetorically, still staring. "He's so old! There are even gray streaks in his hair…"

"Well," Tony said. "You haven't seen him since he was 18. What did you expect?"

"I don't know," McGee said uneasily. "I hadn't really thought about it, I suppose. You know, I don't think I would've even had recognized him if we had met on the street… It really has been a long time, hasn't it?"

"You're still looking at him with a kid's eyes," Gibbs remarked. "You're both grown now."

"You're right," McGee said, tearing his eyes away from his brother's photo. "Of course you're right. It's just… weird."

"Timothy!"

McGee looked up as he heard his name being called. Ducky was standing on the landing outside MTAC, calling down to him.

"Yeah, Ducky?"

"I wondered if I might have a word with you?"

McGee looked quickly at Gibbs who nodded. "Sure," he answered.

"Wonderful," Ducky said. "Meet me in the elevator?"

"Okay."

When the elevator arrived at his floor, McGee stepped in and nodded a greeting at Ducky. He waited until the doors had closed before he spoke. "So you've heard?"

"Yes, I heard," Ducky confirmed. "I feel that I must extend my sympathies to you. I can only imagine how traumatic these events must have been for you at such an early age and I appreciate how very difficult you must find the situation you are now in."

"Uh… thanks," McGee said uncomfortably.

"I have just come from a meeting with director Vance—"

"He's the one who told you?" McGee interrupted. Maybe the director gossiped after all.

"Aye," Ducky said. "As there is no need for my medical expertise in this case, not as of yet anyway, the director has asked me to turn my mind to creating an apt profile of your brother."

McGee snorted. "I hate to burst your bubble, Ducky, but it's already been done."

"Oh?" Ducky's eyebrows rose. "How so?"

McGee's eyes wandered about the elevator car for a bit, before settling on the older man. His shoulders hunched and he seemed to shrink into himself, obviously uneasy with the subject. Ducky frowned, concerned with his behavior.

"He's already been checked out from here to Timbuktu," McGee explained, crossing his arms defensively. "Even before the trial started every profiler and forensic psychiatrist in the world wanted to get their hands on him and figure out what made him tick. Apparently he was something of an enigma. There's a plethora of scholarly articles written about him, even more non-scholarly articles and at least three books, that I know about anyway. And some awful TV-movies."

"Yes…" Ducky said ponderingly, reaching out to put a hand on Tim's arm. "Yes, I imagine there would be. But for the moment, we are not interested in why he did his deeds, are we? We want to profile what made him leave his prison, and where he is headed. What his motive for escape is. But I will need to look into his past motivations too, of course. Is that something you could help me with?"

The doors of the elevator opened down in the basement and they exited and walked into the autopsy room.

McGee shook his head. "I've never read any of the articles and I've never looked up the old case files. I've never wanted to know. I'm sure I could help you find them if you wanted, though," he said, gesturing towards Ducky's computer.

"No, thank you, Timothy," Ducky said, moving closer to his desk, McGee following him. "I can do that myself, I'm a quite competent scholarly researcher, you know. You have much more important things to do. It's your personal reflections I'm interested in." He sat down in his desk chair, patting the corner of his desk invitingly.

"Whatever I can do, Ducky, but I haven't had any contact with him since I was 12," McGee shrugged and sat down on the desk. "I'm not sure I can be of much help."

"That is fine, Timothy," Ducky assured him, leaning over and patting him on the knee. "I never meant to make you uncomfortable."

"It's okay, Ducky," McGee smiled shyly at him. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, my boy," Ducky said, pulling back again. "Of course. Go right ahead."

"Well…" McGee said. "Could it be that Vance has asked you to do a little profiling on me too?"

"He has asked me to suss you out a little, yes," Ducky said carefully. "He does have the unfortunate task of thinking of the political ramifications should this investigation go any less than stellar. No matter which attitude you take towards the case, your participation will always be challengeable."

"So he wants to know what my attitude is?" McGee asked, exasperated.

"Oh, we already know your attitude," Ducky assured him. "What Vance wants to know is how likely it is that your attitude will change and swing towards compassion towards you brother. He trusts you right now, because of your known character and your exemplary record, but family is always a difficult matter."

"I'll never change my stance," McGee said harshly. "I know what my brother did, because I saw it with my own two eyes."

Ducky startled with surprise. "You saw it?"

But McGee wasn't listening to him. "This is a difficult situation for me." He stood up and started pacing. Ducky swiveled his chair to keep looking at him. "I turned him in, Ducky, and got him sent to prison and it tore me apart. It took a long time to come back from that and I never in a million years imagined I would have to do it again. Maybe I won't have the strength to slap the cuffs on him myself, but I will never let him get away as long as it is in my control. I promise you that. But it's only been a few hours since I found out, Ducky. My head's still spinning. Not only will I have to confront my own long-suppressed demons, I have to show them to everyone else too."

Ducky reached out a hand and snagged McGee's sleeve to stop his movements. "What is your biggest fear, Timothy?" he asked once he had established eye contact.

"My biggest fear?" Tim huffed unhappily. "That Denny will murder someone before we can catch him, of course. I'm scared, okay? He's a pathological serial killer who has been denied his needs for more than 20 years. I'm really scared that he'll start killing again. I don't want to go to that crime scene. I don't want to stand over the dead body of another woman and look at her wounds and know that my brother did that to her. I don't want to interview her family and know that it was Denny, I don't want know that someone I was once so close to is capable of hurting other people so much. I don't think I could handle that. It was hard enough the first time." He swallowed hard. It felt like all the air had left his body.

"That is understandable," Ducky agreed sympathetically, "And I share your hope that that will not be required of you. But I was thinking about your biggest fear for yourself. How this will impact your life, your work, your family, your relationships."

Behind him McGee could hear the automatic doors opening and he glanced back, seeing the whole team, including Abby, entering autopsy. He turned back to Ducky. "What you have to understand is that all this happened 22 years ago. Things are different now. Circumstances are different. It was the first couple of years that were the toughest, but my I've built a new life. I was only 12. Look at what I've done with my life since! My family has moved on. Mom's worked at the same school for almost twenty years. Dad rose all the way up to Admiral. Once Sarah was well again and we moved to Virginia, everything changed."

"Once Sarah was well?" Ziva asked from behind his back. "Was she sick?"

McGee sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, summoning up the extra strength he knew he would need for this. It was no coincidence that they were all here. Most likely it had been staged. Gibbs had sent him down here with Ducky to soften him up because Gibbs wouldn't wait forever. The few hours of reprieve he'd already given McGee was by far the most patient Gibbs had ever been when it came to extracting information from someone. Not that McGee hadn't already known that this would be inevitable. So, no time like the present, right?

It was story time.

xxx

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

"What you need to understand is that Denny was the best brother in the world when I was a kid," McGee started. The others stood in a loose cluster in front of him, everyone but Abby carefully keeping their faces neutral. Tim didn't quite know where to focus his eyes, so they kept wandering between his co-workers, the ceiling and the floor.

"He was six years older than me, but he always let me tag along anyway, even when his friends complained. He took care of me, played with me, protected me, taught me everything he knew. He was my best friend and my hero. People always used to comment on how close we were, and mom and dad were really proud of that. Then, when Sarah was born, I tried to be the same to her. Be the brother Denny had taught me to be. But Denny's and my relationship changed when I was about ten, two years before the murders started. Denny started to withdraw from us all. He was always angry, always irritated and he started spending more and more time away from home. His grades plummeted and he started skipping school. There was a full scale war between him and dad about him constantly breaking the house rules, but he never did anything illegal. At least nothing that he got caught doing. Mom said that it was because of puberty, that he was just being a surly teenager, that it was just a phase and that he would come back to us when he grew older, but it still hurt. I felt like I had been abandoned. Looking back, I wish we had done more, that we had seen that there was something seriously wrong, that he wasn't just being moody. But there were never anything tangible. None of the classical warning signals. He didn't pull the legs off flies, none of our neighbors' cats disappeared, he didn't set fire to anything. He was just closed off and angry.

"I guess it all started for real around Thanksgiving in '88. Denny was in his senior year in high school, I was twelve and Sarah was four. Dad was actually home that year. He'd been injured on tour, not badly, but enough to take him off the ship roster for a while. He worked as an instructor on base while waiting to get cleared back for duty. Denny had spent the better part of the fall surly and arguing with mom and dad. Denny didn't want to do anything after high school, he had no ambitions whatsoever. Dad was pushing him hard to join the Navy, to be a true Langston and follow in our father, grandfather and great-grandfather's footsteps, but mom was dead set against it. She wanted him to go to college and was bringing home pamphlets and applications every day. But Denny's grades were going to hell in a hand basket, so it didn't look very promising. So mom was mad at Denny for not trying harder in school. Dad was angry with mom for beating a dead horse and for Denny to refuse the Navy. In his opinion, Denny's only chance was the Navy, and since that was dad's dream anyway, it worked out really well for him. Mom was mad at dad for trying to force Denny into the Navy, she didn't think that that lifestyle would suit him. Well, Denny, as I said, didn't like either alternative, but who knows what he really wanted. He wasn't really communicating with us. Denny and dad spent a lot of time fighting, and mom and dad argued too. Everyone was angry at everyone. It was like living in a war zone at times.

"Then Sarah got really sick. At first we just thought it was a bad cold or the flu or something. She had been having a lot of colds during the fall. But it turned out to be leukemia. It was a real shock to us, especially when the doctors told us that she might not survive. She ended up more or less living in the hospital for several months during the spring. Needless to say, mom's, dad's and my attention became very single minded. Priorities shifted overnight. Even Denny seemed to care a little, but not enough to bond with the family again. Mom taught 5th grade, but took a leave of absence from work to be with Sarah. Whenever she was at the hospital, Dad was supposed to drop in at home on his way from work to the hospital, to make sure we were still alive, that we had something to eat and was planning on doing our homework. But he was usually just home for ten or so minutes, and some days neither of them came home and Denny and I were left home alone. Denny was supposed to make sure I ate dinner and did my homework and things like that, but most nights he just disappeared as soon as we were alone. We didn't know it then, but he had started stalking his victims. I just wanted everything to be okay and for everyone to be happy, so I started overcompensating. I did all the house work. I did the cooking and cleaning and the laundry. I never missed one day of school, I got straight A's, spent time in the hospital with Sarah as often as I was allowed and just did everything right. For a long time mom and dad thought that Denny had finally matured and was handling the situation and since I didn't want to create more conflict, I didn't tell them the truth. Maybe things would've been different if I had, maybe they would've paid us more attention, maybe they would've noticed something I was missing, maybe Denny would've been caught sooner…"

Tim took a short pause, gauging the reactions of the people around him. Abby was easy to read. She had obviously developed a mental picture of a 12-year-old Tim cooking dinner in an empty house and felt so very sorry for him. Ziva and Ducky looked very sympathetic, while Tony looked close to horrified. Gibbs had a stone face that he couldn't decipher. But they kept quiet and didn't ask any question, letting him tell the story at his own pace.

"When the murders started, mom and dad and I didn't really pay them much attention, you know?" he continued. "We heard about them, of course, and maybe talked about them a little, but the big communal panic that seemed to afflict everyone else didn't hit us until a lot later. We were too preoccupied with Sarah, there was no room in our lives for more tragedies. But soon, even we couldn't ward it off. The first woman who died lived only 15 minutes away from us. She was a 25-year-old woman, a newly-wed seaman's wife, and she was raped and murdered in her own home. The whole base was in an uproar. How could anyone be murdered on a secure naval base? Then another women died, and another and another. Every few weeks a woman died and suddenly the base was overrun with police and NIS agents, but still the murders continued. Women were afraid to stay home alone, since that was where the murders happened. A lot of wives whose husbands were out to sea left town and stayed with friends or relatives. And yet 13 women died before Denny was caught. Thirteen! That still feels so unreal.

"In May Sarah took a turn for the worse. She was living full time at the hospital by now and was awaiting a bone marrow transplant. I wasn't a match, but Denny was and he had agreed to do it. It was two days before the transplant was to take place. Mom and dad practically lived at the hospital by now, afraid every day that that day would be her last. Sarah was in isolation, so I hadn't been allowed to see her for a long time. That night I had fixed dinner as usual and as soon as we'd eaten – in silence in front of the TV – Denny announced that he was going out again. And for the first time I got angry. Why couldn't he stay home with me for once? Why couldn't he be my brother for once? I was tired and worried and missed my family and I couldn't figure out what was so important that he couldn't just be there for me for one lousy night. So I decided to follow him. Going out was scary, after all there was a murderer on the loose, but he only killed women, so I figured I should be safe.

"Our house was on the edge of the base, and our backyard faced a wooded area, the whole neighborhood was built along the woods. There was a path that ran between the gardens and the woods, and Denny went out the back and disappeared down that path. I went out a few minutes later and followed the same path, but I had already lost Denny. It was dark and there were no lights on the path. I followed it to the end, a 20 minute walk at the most, but I never caught up with Denny and I had no idea where he could have turned off the path, so I turned around and headed home again.

"Halfway back I walked past a house that had these big glass patio doors and windows facing the back. It was dark outside, but the lights were on inside, so everything that went on was completely visible from the path. I saw movement in the corner of my eye, so I looked over there. And I saw—" He had to stop himself to get his cracking voice back in control. "I saw a woman on her back on the floor and I saw a man sitting on top of her with his hands wrapped around her throat. I saw her thrash about and then, suddenly, she was still, so very still... And he took his hands away and she didn't move. She had died while I was watching. And then I saw the man… I saw him and it was Denny." Tim choked back the lump in his throat. This was so hard to remember, so hard to talk about. "A half-hour earlier he'd been sitting beside me on the couch eating fish sticks, and now…

"I think time stood still then. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to react. It was so surreal. Denny got up, wiped his hands on his shirt, straightened his clothes and reached for the door handle. I panicked. I couldn't stand the thought of seeing him or having to talk to him. And I was scared. I didn't know what he'd do if he saw me, so I hit the ground and crawled into some bushes. I lay there, completely still, with my heart beating wildly in my chest. I think I stopped breathing completely. There was a rushing sound in my ears, I thought I was gonna pass out. I thought I was gonna throw up. I thought my life was over. And then I heard him. He walked right past me without seeing me, and he was whistling. Like he was having a good day. Like he was happy."

McGee focused on his colleagues again. Abby looked like she was ready to pounce on him with one of her attack hugs, but a grim-faced Ziva had a pretty strong grip around her bicep. That didn't stop her from wringing her hands, though, and looking at him with so much concern.

"In a way," McGee said with a slightly shaky voice. "In a way it was a good thing that I saw it, because if I hadn't… If I hadn't seen it myself, then… Well, no power in the world would've been able to convince me that Denny was guilty. Evidence been dammed, I never, ever would've believed it. Even if he had turned himself in and confessed everything, I would be sitting here with you today, trying to convince you that he had been falsely charged and innocently convicted. That is how much faith I had in him. And that is why my shock was so profound.

"I lay under that bush until I couldn't hear him anymore and then I crawled out. I looked towards the house and the woman was still there, of course, where else would she be? Her head was turned towards me. I couldn't see very clearly, I was too far away, but I saw that her eyes were open and that her shirt was torn. I didn't want to believe it was true. How could it be? How could my brother – my hero! – be the murderer that everyone was so afraid of. It didn't make any sense.

"I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go home, Denny would be there. I couldn't get to my parents, they were at the hospital. This was long before every kid had their own cell phone so without a landline or a payphone I was lost. I didn't dare go into the house to use the phone. I knew I should tell the police, but I didn't know how. I didn't know what to say. This was my brother! If I told anyone what I had seen he would go to jail. Mom and dad would be heartbroken, Sarah wouldn't understand what was going on. And I? I thought I might die. It was a horrible choice to have to make, it felt like the ultimate betrayal. We were brothers, we were supposed to have each other's backs. But he didn't exactly have my back anymore. He had already betrayed me. And the dead woman was looking right at me. I knew I had to do right by her. I couldn't just let her lie there and wait for someone to come home and find her.

"I cut through the garden and went out on the street, looking for a pay phone. I thought maybe I could make an anonymous call, I had seen people do that on TV. That way no one would know that it was me who turned him in. Mom and dad would never know what I had seen so they wouldn't blame me. Unbelievable naïve, I know, but I was only 12 and in shock. The streets were pretty much deserted; people were scared to be out. Most kids had very early curfews because of the murders and people tended to only walk their dogs in short circles on their own lawns.

"That's when I was found by an NIS agent. His name was Harlan. He and his partner were out patrolling the streets, and he thought it was strange that a kid was out walking alone in the dark, so they pulled over. I think he could tell immediately that something was wrong. Maybe I looked shell-shocked or something like that. I remember him walking towards me very carefully as if I was a wounded animal who might bolt if I got scared."

_He wandered the streets, as if in his sleep. He didn't really see which way he was going, he just walked and walked and walked. He couldn't believe what he had just seen. He couldn't believe it was true. His brother couldn't be the Cowboy, he just couldn't! How could it be possible?_

_It was dark around him, and empty. No one went out anymore. Not with a crazy murderer on the streets. People stayed at home, with company. Except for him. He was alone. More alone than he had ever been. _

_He couldn't go home. Denny would be there and he couldn't face his brother. Not after what he had seen. How could he ever look him in the eyes again? So what should he do? He badly wanted his parents, but the hospital was so far away and he didn't know what bus to take at night. Besides, he didn't have any money._

_A car drove slowly past him, then it turned around in a driveway and came back, driving alongside him. _

_"Hey, kiddo," someone said, and he glanced over. A man was hanging out of the open passenger side window. He decided to ignore him and walked out onto the grass on the side of the sidewalk._

_"Hey, kiddo, wait up," the man said again. "I just want to talk to you. Lennox, stop the car."_

_He quickened his pace as the car stopped and he heard a car door open. "Come on, kiddo, wait up. I'm not going to hurt you."_

_He felt a hand on his shoulder and shrugged it off. When it returned he shrugged it off again and started running in blind panic. Who was this guy? What did he want?_

_"No, no, no. Wait, wait up." Strong arms wrapped around him from behind. "It's all right, it's okay. I'm a federal agent. I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to talk to you."_

_He wasn't listening. He was thrashing around, trying to free himself when a badge was thrust into his line of sight._

_"See, I'm an agent. I won't hurt you."_

_Slowly he calmed down and stopped struggling, but his heart was still hammering in his chest. He stared at the badge as if it was the Holy Grail._

_"Are you calm now? Can you talk to me?"_

_He nodded and felt the arms around him loosen. He turned around slowly, coming face to face with a kind looking man in his mid-thirties. He had blond, short hair and brown eyes and he was smiling at him._

_"Hey there, kiddo, nice to see you," he said. "I'm Agent Harlan. What's your name?"_

_"Jo— Johnny."_

_"Hello Johnny," Harlan said kindly. "Are you feeling okay?"_

_He nodded, even though he didn't feel okay at all. _

_"Well, I really just wanted to ask you what you were doing out so late, but it seems like you've had somewhat of a fright tonight. How about if my partner and I drive you home?"_

_He shook his head vehemently, panic shining through his eyes. "No, I can't go home."_

_Harlan frowned. "Why not? Has someone hurt you?"_

_"Are you—Are you really an agent?" he asked with a trembling voice._

_"Yes, I am," Harlan looked at him seriously. "Do you need help with something?"_

_"I have to tell you something," he whispered. "It's— it's—" To his embarrassment he could feel tears starting to well up in his eyes. He sniffled and wiped his sleeve over his eyes._

_"Hey, hey. It's okay, kiddo," Harlan said, crouching down in front of him, holding his shoulders gently. "Take your time. Have you done something?"_

_He shook his head._

_"Has someone done something to you?"_

_He shook his head again. "I saw something," he whispered._

_"You saw something?" Harlan clarified. "Okay, can you tell me what you saw?"_

_"Him…" He kept his eyes firmly on the ground._

_"Him?"_

_He nodded. "I saw him… I—I saw him kill someone."_

_Harlan grew very serious. "You saw a man kill someone?"_

_He nodded._

_"When? Tonight?"_

_He nodded again. "Just a little while ago."_

_Harlan threw a quick look over his shoulder at his partner, who was now on full alert. "You saw a man kill someone? Where?"_

_He turned and pointed behind him, suddenly realizing just how far he'd walked. "About four blocks down. I can show you."_

_"That's good. That's really good, Johnny," Harlan said. "Now, the man you saw, did you see him well? Can you describe him to me?"_

_He closed his eyes, tears now rolling heavily down his cheeks. "It was my brother," he whispered so quietly that he hardly even heard himself._

_Harlan leaned in close. "I'm sorry, kiddo, I couldn't quite hear that."_

_He looked up at him again and said a little louder, "I saw my brother. The Cowboy is my brother."_

_"Are you sure?" The booming voice of Harlan's partner Lennox made him flinch. Harlan shushed his partner with an angry wave. _

_"Are you sure, Johnny?" Harlan said softly._

_He nodded, hiccupping with sobs. "I followed him. I wanted to see why he was always going out every night. But I didn't want to see that."_

_"I understand, kiddo," Harlan said carefully. "I need you to tell me your brother's name."_

_"Dennis Langston."_

_"Dennis Langston? Okay, that's good. How about your address? Where do you live?"_

_He told them his address._

_Harlan stood up and turned to Lennox, though he kept one hand on his shoulder. The two agents had a hushed conversation, then Harlan turned him. _

_"Someone's going to come and take you to the station, okay. You'll wait for me there. I'll come see you as soon as I can. You've done really, really well, kiddo. I know how difficult this must be for you and I'm afraid it isn't over yet. But you've done really well."_

_A few minutes later a car showed up and he got in it. With a lump of coal in his stomach, a shard of glass in his heart and tears on his face he was whisked away into his new life. The life where he was the brother of a murderer._

xxx

McGee shook himself a little, pretending that he didn't see the tears in Abby's eyes or Tony's hard set jaw. He looked at his watch. "Listen, I need a little break. I know it's a little early, but how about if I go and pick us up some lunch? I'm hungry, at least." He really needed a little time to compose himself, and he hoped the others would understand. Besides, he'd told them everything important already. At least he thought he had.

"All right," Gibbs agreed. "Sandwiches from Bernardo's okay with everyone?"

Everyone quickly assented, but no one gave him any orders, apparently not wanting to burden him, when he was obviously just trying to escape. No matter, he knew what they liked anyway.

"I'll see you in a half hour then," he said, fleeing autopsy.

xxx

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

Tim didn't turn on the radio in the car, preferring the silence. Composure wasn't exactly coming easily. That day was without competition the worst day of his entire life. He had so many more memories from that night and they were all clamoring for his attention now that he had voluntarily opened the flood gates for the first time in at least fifteen years.

xxx

_He sat on a hard, wall mounted, wooden bench, looking out over a bullpen. It was late at night, so many desks were empty, but there was a buzz of excitement over the people who were there. The rumor had gotten around; everyone knew that they finally had a suspect in the Cowboy case. And with the new murder that had happened during the night, more and more people were being called in. He was getting some furtive looks from the officers and agents, but no one bothered him. No one knew why he was here. Agent Harlan hadn't even told the officers who brought him here why._

_He'd been sitting here for an hour or so, waiting for agent Harlan, who was no doubt on his way to pick up Denny, whom he was sure was at home by now. Agent Harlan had promised to come to him as soon as he could, so he waited quietly. He didn't know why he trusted the agent so, but he had been kind to him. And he needed an anchor in this new and confusing world._

_A woman approached him with a mug of tea. "Here you go, hun."_

_He took it and thanked her automatically, but then put the mug down on the bench beside him. He didn't want it._

_The double doors of frosted glass that separated the reception area from the inner sanctum of the police station opened and there were Agents Harlan and Lennox, both with a hard, firm grip on Denny – who was handcuffed and was being led through the bullpen._

_Everything in the room came to a full stop as everyone turned to look in astonishment at this boy, this teenager, this high school student, who was being accused of being the worst serial killer their county had ever seen. Shock, contempt and anger were evident in their eyes. _

_Denny drew his head up high and looked around with contempt, until his eyes fell on his brother. His eyes widened, and then he started struggling against the agents holding him. "Johnny? What are you doing here? What is he doing here? He hasn't done anything. Let him go!"_

_"Johnny isn't in trouble, Dennis," Agent Harlan said calmly, "You are."_

_Denny looked between Agent Harlan and his little brother, realization slowly dawning on him. "What have you said, Johnny? What have you done? What have you done to me?" he yelled. "You can't believe a word he says, he's just a little kid," he begged Harlan. "Johnny! What have you done?"_

_He couldn't stop looking at his brother as the agents ushered Denny into a small interrogation room. He didn't look like the monster he'd seen earlier that night. He didn't look like someone who could murder a woman in cold blood and enjoy it. He looked like the same old Denny, but he wasn't anymore, was he? Agent Lennox followed Denny into the room, but Harlan turned back towards him. He was now standing up, feeling hurt and bewildered._

_"Listen kiddo," Harlan said, urging him to sit down again next to him on the bench with a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Your parents weren't at home, like I had expected, and I can't talk to you until one of them are present. Do you know where they are?"_

He nodded. "They're at the hospital. My sister's sick. My mom stays there overnight and dad said he'd be home late. That usually means around midnight."

_"I'm so sorry to hear about your sister," Harlan said. "I'll send some men to pick your dad up and bring him here."_

_"What about Denny?" he asked._

_"How do you mean?" Harlan wondered._

_His brows furrowed. Everything was so confusing. "Doesn't dad have to be here before you talk to him too?"_

_Harlan shook his head. "Denny is 18 years old. Unless he asks for a lawyer we can talk to him all we want."_

_"Can't I ask for him?" he asked._

_"You want to get him a lawyer?" Harlan clarified. "Sorry, but there's nothing you can do. I'm sure he will ask for one though. Or your father will arrange one. Don't worry about it."_

_"But Denny only turned 18 last week!" he protested._

_"18 is still 18." Harlan patted him on the knee. "Will you be okay here for a little longer, kiddo? I have to go talk to some people."_

_He nodded reluctantly. He really wanted Harlan to stay with him, but he was afraid to ask._

_"Okay?" Harlan said. "Good. I'll be back for you. If you need something just tell Eleanor over there." He pointed to the woman who had brought him the tea. "Okay?" He patted him on the knee again and smiled reassuringly. "Just sit tight."_

_So he did. He sat there, waiting, feeling like he was trapped in his own little bubble of misery. He sat there until his father suddenly stood before him. He looked up, startled. "Dad!"_

_He flew up and threw his arms around his father's waist, hugging him fiercely, burying his face in his father's chest, drawing comfort from the familiar smell. He felt his father's arms close a little awkwardly around him. His dad had never been much of a hugger. _

_"Johnny?" he could hear the surprise in his dad's voice as one of his father's hands came up to stroke his head. "What are you doing here?"_

_"Dad?" He looked up at his father's face._

_"Lieutenant Commander Langston!" Agent Harlan came at him. "I'm glad you're here."_

_"Agent…" His dad trailed off, one hand leaving his son to take the outstretched hand._

_"Agent Harlan," Harlan supplied, shaking the LCDR's hand._

_"Agent Harlan, what is Johnny doing here? I was told to come here because Dennis was in trouble."_

_"Dennis is in trouble," Harland confirmed. "Big trouble. Johnny is here as a witness."_

_"Witness?" His dad looked down at him again. "What happened? Where's Dennis?"_

_His mouth opened, and then closed again. He didn't know what to tell his father. Bewildered he looked over at Harlan, silently begging for help._

_"Why don't we talk in a little more private room," Harlan gestured to a door a little way down the corridor._

_Once they were seated, he and his dad on one side of a table and Harlan on the other, Harlan turned to his father first. "LCDR Langston, Dennis is suspected of being the murderer that has plagued this base the last six months. The one who the media has named the Cowboy."_

_He could see his father's jaw drop in astonishment. "Are you insane?" he roared. "Dennis would never—"_

_"Dad, I saw him," he interrupted._

_His dad looked at him, frowning. "You saw him? What— what do you mean you saw him?"_

_"I saw him kill someone." He looked down at his own hands, which were clenched tightly together on the table. "Tonight. I saw him kill a woman."_

_His dad was shaking his head. "No. No, it's a mistake. Johnny, tell the truth now. You must've seen something else, you must be mistaken. It must be a mistake."_

_He felt tears burn behind his eyelids again. He wanted his dad to believe him, but at the same time he didn't. He wanted to be mistaken._

_"Johnny?" Harlan said, leaning over the table to touch his arm. "Why don't you tell us what you saw? Take your time, there's no rush."_

_"The truth," his father reminded him harshly. He could feel the white knuckled grip his father had on the back of his chair. The chair was shaking faintly under the LCDR's harsh administrations. "Tell us the truth."_

_So he told them. He told them everything. Everything he had seen, everything he had felt, everything he had thought. When he was through his father was ash white in the face, and visibly trembling. He had never seen his dad so shaken up._

_"You believe me, don't you, Dad?" he pleaded._

_"Yes," his father said with a hoarse voice. "Yes. I wish I didn't have to, but I know you would never lie to me. Not about something this serious. Dear god, what am I going to tell your mother?" His father turned to Harlan. "What happens now?"_

_"We're going to need to talk to Johnny again," Harlan said. "Probably several times. But all he has to do is to keep doing as well as he's been doing tonight, and he has nothing to worry about."_

_His father cleared his throat. "What about Denny, then? Do I have to pay bail, or how do we…"_

_"Well," Harlan said. "There will be an arraignment hearing, of course. I don't know when. The judge will decide. But to be honest, I doubt he will be granted bail. For crimes like these, he will most likely be held in custody until the trial, which probably won't happen for several months."_

_His dad looked up, scared. "Keep him in custody? But… you can't do that! My daughter needs a bone marrow transplant and Dennis is the donor. The operation is planned the day after tomorrow. He has to be there!"_

_"LDCR Langston, I'm afraid that won't be possible," Harlan said sympathetically. "I'm sorry, I had no idea how serious the matter with you daughter was, but you must understand the severity of the crimes your son is being accused of."_

_"And you must understand that we're talking about my daughter's life!" his father yelled. "She's only four years old!"_

_Harlan sighed. "Decisions like that have to be made by a judge. I suggest you get a lawyer who can plead your case."_

_He sat quietly with a rock in his stomach. With everything that had happened during the night, the transplant had slipped his mind. Now his sister was going to die because her brother had to stay in jail. And Denny was in jail because he had put him there. Oh, how he wished he had never followed Denny. He wished he didn't know what he knew. He just wanted things to be back to normal. He started crying._

_"Johnny," his father said, putting his arm around his slim shoulders, pulling him close. _

_"It's going to be okay." But he had tears in his eyes too. It shocked him, he had never seen his father cry before._

_"No, Dad, it's not," he sobbed. "Sarah's going to die, and it's all my fault. And Denny's going to jail and that's my fault too."_

_"No," Agent Harlan said, leaning over the table and putting a hand on John's trembling arm. "This is not your fault. This will never be your fault. And none of the consequences that will follow will be your fault. You are a very brave young man, Johnny. One of the bravest I've ever met. It took strength to come forward. It took courage to tell the truth, no matter the consequences. You have done everything right. I'm very sorry that it hurts you so much, and that it will continue to hurt you, but you did the right thing. Yes, you will have to live with the consequences, but you did the right thing! I know it doesn't feel like that right now, but that is something you should be proud of, now and forever."_

xxx

McGee sighed as he turned his engine off in the Navy Yard parking lot and reached for the bags of food in the passenger seat. He had carried those words like a torch over the years. Doing what was right was something to be proud of. Even when it was difficult, even when it hurt, doing the right thing was something to be proud of.

As he was walking across the parking lot, his cell phone rang. He had to put the bags down to free up his hands before he could fish the phone out of his pocket and answer. It was his grandmother, Penny.

"Oh, sweetheart, I just heard! Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Penny," he told her, frowning at the bad connection. "I—Penny, where are you? I can barely hear you."

"I'm in Nepal," she informed him. "I'm using a pay phone! It's so charmingly antiquated. But the phone lines here aren't so good."

"Nepal?" After all these years, Penny could still surprise him.

"Yes, I'm at a spiritual retreat outside of Kathmandu. There's the most wonderful guru here, he's really helping me opening my chakras. I'm feeling very light. Like a whole new person! But enough about that. Do you want me to come home? Just say the word and I'm on the next plane out."

"No, that's not necessary," he assured her. "I'll be fine."

"Are you absolutely sure?" Penny sounded worried. "I don't want you to go through this alone. And god knows your father won't be any kind of support to you."

"I'm not alone," he said. "I have the team."

"The team," Penny snorted. "You should have family. I'm coming home."

"I need the team to protect my family," Tim explained. "And you are safer where you are. I don't want to have to worry about you too. "

"You think Denny could hurt me?" Penny scoffed. "I'd take that boy by the ear and march him right back to jail."

Tim couldn't help but smile. "I'm sure you would. But I think the team and I are better equipped to do that. So stay where you are. Besides, with the communications out of Asia, we'll have him back in jail before you even land. Trust me to do my job."

"Well, all right," Penny surrendered. "But you just say the word…"

"And you'll come running," Tim suddenly felt so much better. "I know. You've always stood by me."

"That's because I love you," Penny said matter-of-factly.

"I know," Tim said. "I love you too."

"I have to go, honey. My next meditation class is starting soon."

"Okay, Penny. Take care."

"You too."

They hung up and McGee picked up the food bags again, shaking his head fondly. His grandmother was a very special person, but he wouldn't want her any other way.

xxx

TBC…


	7. Chapter 7

Ziva and Tony were away when McGee came up to the bullpen. Gibbs was there, though, together with Fornell. They were bent over a file on Gibbs' desk. As soon as they looked up at him, McGee knew that Fornell knew. It was in his eyes. But, surprisingly enough, he didn't say anything. McGee was equal parts relieved and disappointed. Relieved that there would be no repercussion, that Fornell obviously still trusted him and wasn't demanding his immediate dismissal. But also disappointment that he had nothing to say. They had known each other long enough, and worked together enough times for this to be a big deal. Wasn't Fornell even going to acknowledge it? Say something encouraging? Maybe Gibbs had told him not to make a big deal of it. Or maybe he was the kind of person who never knew what to say when a topic turned emotionally difficult.

McGee cleared his throat nervously and started distributing sandwiches on his colleagues' desks. "Anything new?" he asked.

"We've scoured most of the area around the prison, but no one's seen anything and there are no traces of him." Fornell said. "Except for the man whose car was stolen, Langston doesn't seem to have bothered stopping anywhere."

"Not very surprising," Gibbs said. "I'd get as far away as I could as fast as I could, too."

"But the car has been found," Fornell continued. "In a mall parking lot between the prison and here. It's being towed here right now. Abby will go through it with a fine toothed comb."

"So, where are Tony and Ziva?" McGee asked.

"A man called the hotline," Fornell said, "He said he was mugged at an ATM this morning, at the mall where the stolen car was found, and he swears that it was Langston who did it. Tony and Ziva went to interview him."

McGee nodded thoughtfully. "Was he hurt?"

"No, McGee," Gibbs said rather gently. "He hasn't hurt anyone."

"That we know of," Fornell said. Gibbs frowned at him as McGee winced.

"What about me, Boss?"

"Abby needs you," Gibb said, unwrapping his sandwich and wordlessly watched as Fornell stole Tony's lunch. "She wants to scan the photos of the women you found and run them through some facial recognition programs."

"I can do that," McGee nodded, rather glad to be escaping the bullpen and Fornell's piercing eyes.

"Anyone who lives within a hundred miles, you contact them yourself," Gibbs told him. "Send the rest to Fornell's guys."

McGee put his own sandwich and soda back in the bag together with Abby's and Ducky's lunches and headed for the basement.

"Hey, McGee," Fornell called out before he had made it out of earshot.

McGee turned back to him. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

McGee was surprised, but tried not to show it. "Yeah. Sure."

"Good," Fornell said gruffly, nodding at him.

Gibbs looked between them thoughtfully, before he also nodded. McGee turned around again and headed for the elevator.

He delivered Ducky's food first, and then headed for the lab.

"McGee!" Abby greeted him exuberantly, running up to him and throwing her arms around him in a hug strong enough that McGee imagined he could hear his ribs creak. "How are you?"

He smiled crookedly. "You don't have to worry about me, Abby. I'm not going to break."

"I'm not worried," she said, not changing her forced happy tone of voice, but not letting him go either. "I'm just being polite!"

"If you say so." McGee didn't exactly sound convinced as he with a fair amount of struggle freed himself from her arms. "What are you working on?"

"I'm analyzing the legal pad from your brother's cell," Abby said, returning to her worktable. "I wanted to see if he'd put down his escape plan in writing."

"And?"

"And… Apparently he likes to write poetry."

McGee could feel his jaw drop. Of all the things she could've said, that was the last thing he would've guessed. "Poetry?"

"Yup," Abby confirmed. "Not half bad, but not as good of a writer as you are. Anyway, I checked his prison record. He's been a part of voluntary creative writing class. So, maybe homework?"

"What does he write about?" McGee wondered aloud.

Abby scrunched up her face. "Well, so far, there's one about a thimble, one about a lighter, and one about a pink bunny."

"Pink bunny?" McGee said, shaking his head disbelievingly. "I really don't know this guy at all."

"What's in the bag?" Abby asked.

"Oh, I've brought your lunch. In there?" McGee nodded towards the inner lab and started towards the door.

"No! McGee, wait!" Abby hurled herself past him and rushed into the room, throwing herself into her office chair, frantically attacking the keyboard.

"Abby?" McGee said, annoyed. "_What_ are you doing?"

She looked up at him with an innocent look. "I'm planning your surprise party. Don't want to ruin the surprise!"

McGee rubbed his eyes tiredly. "My birthday isn't for another eight months and we have never had a big celebration before."

"That's why this one needs so much planning," Abby told him seriously.

"Abby," McGee was starting to get fed up with her antics. "I'm working this case, same as you, and I'm doing it with open eyes. There is nothing you have to protect me from and you definitely shouldn't be hiding anything from me. So _what_ were you looking at?"

"Okay. I've joined the official fan club," she said quickly.

"Official fan club?" His eyebrows rose.

"Uh-huh," Abby nodded. "The Cowboy's official fan club. But it's just because of the case, you know. I'm not actually in to murderers or anything."

McGee nodded. "That's good thinking, Abby. I mean, I had no idea that there was an official fan club—"

"I don't think it's official official, you know," Abby interrupted. "I mean, it's not like it's sanctioned from anywhere or anything. It's probably just a name. Besides, there are several more communities dedicated to worshipping your brother. And all the individual loony fan pages, of course."

Tim shook his head sadly. "Sometimes, I don't understand people. He a murderer… What is there to idolize? Anything on the chatter?"

"Lots!" Abby said. "The escape's got them all in a frenzy. An alarming amount of people are hoping to run into him. There's this fantasy thread where they're competing in who can dream up the most perfect meet-cute. There are also people who are claiming to have seen him, of course, but since he can't possibly be in Alaska, California and Germany at the same time, I'm only looking at the ones that seem remotely possible. But mostly I'm just keeping my ears open for any gossip that might have a kernel of truth."

"Well, just tell us anything you think we need to know," McGee said, putting the lunch bag on the desk. "Gibbs wanted me to help you scan the pictures of Denny's admirers, can I use this computer?"

"Of course," Abby said graciously, patting her scanner affectionately. "Fastest scanner in the house. You know what, any name you get a hit on, send it to me and I'll check the fan clubs for them, see if they're active there."

"Okay, good idea," McGee said, sitting down at the desk and pulling his sandwich out of the bag.

"Right, lunch!" Abby said. "Good, I'm starving!" She pulled up another chair and sat very close to him, he had to roll his chair away from her a little to have enough elbow room to actually unwrap his sandwich. "You don't mind if I eat with you, right?"

McGee just smiled at her and started working one-handedly while he ate.

"You know what I realized today?" Abby asked and then continued without waiting for an answer. "You hardly ever talk about your childhood."

"Well," McGee cocked his head, "There's a reason for that."

"But I know hardly anything about little Timmy!" Abby exclaimed. "Or little, uh, Jimmy, was it?"

"Johnny," McGee said. "My name was John."

"Wow," Abby said. "I can't imagine calling you Johnny."

"Well," McGee said patiently. "Luckily you won't have to. It's not my name anymore."

"So what was little Johnny like? What did he like to do?" 

McGee shrugged. "All the normal kid things, I suppose. I played baseball, rode my bicycle, read comics, played video games, hung out with friends."

"Did you have a best friend? Like a Tony of the past?" Abby wiggled her eyebrows at him, but the smile died when she saw the pained expression that crossed over McGee's face. "Tim?"

"His name was Oliver," McGee said quietly. "We were best friends – thick as thieves. We had a tree house in his back yard where we went after school most every day, we had sleepovers most every weekend, went to the scouts and little league together… you get the drift, right? When Sarah got sick he was really there for me. He knew how close I was to her, so he spent a lot of time with me, cheering me up, telling me it would be okay. And since Denny had already withdrawn from me and my parents were engrossed in Sarah's care, I don't think I could've done it without him… And then Denny murdered his sister."

Abby gasped. "What? Oh no. What happened?"

"At first we didn't know it was him of course," he explained. "We just knew that she had been killed by the Cowboy. I… I did everything I could for Oliver. Her name was Elena. She was the same age as Denny; they even went to school together. And when she died, Oliver came to me for support and comfort. I spent days with him, letting him talk about it or distracting him from thinking about it, whatever he needed just then. Mom and I even went to her funeral, to show our support. That was before we knew… It's like… You know, when Elena died we grieved together. I grieved both for Oliver and Elena's sake, but I could also see firsthand what life would be if Sarah didn't survive. Suddenly death wasn't such an abstract concept and I grieved for that possible future too. It was a scary time, but we stood by each other, Oliver and I. And then we found out. My brother had assaulted and murdered his sister."

"Oh, Tim," Abby put his arms around his shoulders and rested her chin on his shoulder. "How did he react?"

"He went berserk," McGee said sadly. "I don't blame him. He was so angry and probably shocked, too. He didn't know how to handle his own emotions. So he beat me up."

"What?" Abby sat up straight. "But it wasn't your fault!"

"I know," McGee said uncomfortably. "He was just so hurt. The whole base was in an uproar, maybe he was too caught up in the mob mentality."

"Well, did he apologize?" Abby wanted to know. "Did you make up?"

McGee shook his head. "I was kept home from school after that. I never even saw him again."

"Poor Tim." Abby put her chin back on his shoulder. "You lost your best friend."

"I lost a lot of things that year," McGee said dejectedly, clutching the arm that rested across his chest. "I lost my brother and my best friend – all of my friends really. I almost lost my little sister. I lost my home and my school. I lost my name. I lost my way of living and my place in the world."

Abby didn't say anything, she just hugged him harder.

xxx

Scanning pictures turned out to be a much too tedious job for McGee. Scan the picture, check the quality of the copy, send it to the databases, wait for a match… lather, rinse, repeat. The box of pictures was deep so it took most of the afternoon which gave him way too much time alone with his thoughts. Abby had spent lunch prying him for details in the way only Abby could and he had parted with much more information than he had ever expected to share with anyone. He had talked about Oliver. For the first time in 20 years, he had talked about Oliver. Though the hurt had lessened a lot over the years, he still missed him.

xxx

_He and Oliver sat in their tree house. They had just come back from Elena's funeral. The wake was going on inside the house and on the patio; the sound of muted voices reached them where they sat. Oliver's grandmother had given them some sandwiches and soda cans and sent them out of the house. She wanted Oliver away from prying eyes and nosy questions. Neither of them had touched the sandwiches. They weren't crying, because they were 12-year-old boys, and 12-year-old boys didn't cry in front of each other. They had both cried in the church though, but they both pretended they hadn't noticed the other one crying. _

_"I'm going to kill him," Oliver said, his eyes tearing up with fury and grief. "I'm going to find out who he is and then I'm going to kill him."_

_"You can't," he said. "You're just a kid. You can't kill anyone."_

_"I can and I will," Oliver said angrily." Will you help me?"_

_"Help you?"_

_"You're my best friend, Johnny," Oliver said. "You have to help me. Somehow, we'll figure out who he is, and when we do, we're going to kill him."_

_He shook his head. "How? How are we going to find him? All the police and all the agents haven't been able to figure it out, how could we?"_

_Oliver shrugged. "You're smart. You'll figure something out. Will you help me? Promise me that you will help me." _

_He swallowed. "I'll help you," he said, and then he looked down at the floor. It was a harmless promise, right? There was no way they were ever going to find the Cowboy before the police did, and even if they did, Oliver wouldn't really try to kill him. He wouldn't be able too. So he promised, because his best friend had just buried his sister, and he wanted to help him feel better._

_They didn't know who the monster was yet._

_xxx_

_Three week later he knew who the monster was. Three weeks later he walked into the school yard, and suddenly realized that everyone was staring at him. At first he was a little taken aback. It had only been two days since he had seen what he had seen. He had been so lost in his own misery that he hadn't even thought about other people. The police hadn't released Denny's name officially, but a naval base was a small community, when it came to things like this. Of course they had all heard by now. And of course they were disgusted with it. Most of the kids at school knew Denny too._

_He hung his head in shame, and with his eyes firmly on the ground he started shuffling across the school yard, pretending that he didn't hear the whispers around him. He shouldn't have gone to school. What had he been thinking? What had his parents been thinking, sending him to school as if it was a normal day? _

_"Johnny!"_

_The harsh voice had him looking up with a lump in his throat. Oliver stood in front of him, his eyes black with hatred._

_He was already shaking his head. "Oliver, I didn't know."_

_"Liar!" his friend shouted at him. "You're lying! Elena's dead and you let it happen!"_

_"No! No, I didn't!" he denied. "I didn't know anything. I swear!" _

_"You promised you'd help me find him, and instead you were protecting him!" Oliver was so angry that he was shaking._

_"No, Oliver. I didn't. I really didn't know," he pleaded with his friend._

_"He killed my aunt too," another boy said, and he twirled around. For the first time he realized that Oliver wasn't alone._

_"And my cousin," a third boy said._

_"I'm so— sorry," he said with a shaky voice. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know! I really didn't."_

_He didn't see who threw the first punch. He just knew that there were a lot of them and that they hurt. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was Oliver telling him that he hated him._

_When he woke up, he was in the ER, and his mother was sitting next to him, crying inconsolably. He had a broken arm, a concussion, eight stitches in his scalp and a very bruised body. He never went back to that school, and he never saw Oliver again._

xxx

TBC…


	8. Chapter 8

"McGee!"

Tim jerked out of his thoughts. Abby had stuck her head into the room. "Gibbs wants you back in the bullpen."

"Okay." He gathered the notes he'd made from the phone interviews he had done and headed upstairs. Tony and Ziva were just returning, coming out of the other elevator.

"Was it Denny?" McGee asked as Tony draped his jacket over his desk chair. 

"Yes," Tony said, putting his gun and badge back in his desk drawer. "The guy ID'd him from his photo, and his description of Denny's clothes matches the prison's statement."

"That answers one question," Fornell said. "Now we know he didn't have any outside help. If he'd had that they would've made sure he had clothes and money waiting on the outside."

"So what happened?" McGee asked.

Ziva reiterated the mugging victim's story. "He was at an ATM when Denny came up from behind and stuck something sharp in his neck – a shiv of some sort – and demanded he withdrew 500 dollars and give it to him. So he did. Denny took the money, said thanks, and left him there."

"Was he okay?" McGee asked worriedly.

"Shook up, of course," Ziva said, smiling reassuringly at him. "But he was not physically hurt."

"500 dollars, right?" McGee asked, jotting it down. "And you have his contact information?"

"Of course," Ziva scoffed, but Tony cocked his head and frowned at McGee.

"You're planning on paying him back the money, aren't you?" he asked McGee.

McGee looked a little ashamed at being caught, but stood up straight. "And what's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong is that you don't go around paying back any other people we meet who have been mugged," Tony said harshly. "This is not your responsibility."

"This is different," McGee mumbled, shuffling his feet.

"You said it wouldn't be," Tony reminded him. "That's why Gibbs lets you stay on the case, because you promised us that you wouldn't treat you brother different from any other criminal. So you don't get to make it up to the victims, because this wasn't your fault."

McGee looked up to see Gibbs and Fornell staring at him. He swallowed. This was a test. Very deliberately, he put the pen down and changed the subject. "I talked to nine of the women who had sent letters and photos to Denny. They all said the same thing; he never answered any of their letters, and as far as they knew he didn't even know their names." Actually they had said a whole lot of other things too, things he didn't care to repeat. Everything from shame at having been caught contacting a serial killer to sheer jubilant admiration for his brother. It had sickened him to no end, in a way it never had before when it had been about other people. Tony was right. His objectivity was slipping. "I think we're barking up the wrong tree, Boss. There's no indication that he's had any outside contact at all."

"Prison records say the same thing," Fornell said. "As does the other four prisons he's been to. With the exception of his lawyer he hasn't received a single visitor, sent a letter or made a phone call during his entire prison career."

"He could have been smuggling messages out with other prisoners," Ziva remarked.

"He could have," Fornell conceded. "But there's no indication of it. By the looks of it, Langston isolated himself completely when he went to prison."

McGee blinked. His brother's self-imposed isolation had always been cause for argument between his parents.

_"Stop writing the damn letters, Alice. He's never going to answer them. Keeping himself isolated is the only good thing he's ever done for this family. And even if he did answer, why would you be interested in what he has to say?"_

_"If I wasn't interested, why would I be writing him? He's still our son."_

_"He's no son of mine."_

Gibbs rubbed his chin. "All right. Let's let the FBI finish up with the groupies. We've got other things to focus on. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" McGee's head shot up. "But Boss—"

"No buts," Gibbs interjected. "We've been up since before four this morning. We have no leads to follow. There are dozens of men out searching and command knows to call me the minute something breaks. We are all going home to get some rest."

"All right," McGee agreed reluctantly. "Just make sure you don't turn off your phone."

Gibbs looked incredulously at him. "When have you ever known me to turn off my phone?"

"Sorry, Boss," McGee mumbled. "I didn't think…"

"Stop apologizing," Gibbs grumbled. "Hey, Tim?"

McGee looked up at him.

"Are you okay to go home by yourself?"

McGee blinked stupidly. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"All right," Gibbs nodded. "Just holler if you need anything. No one here is turning off their phones tonight, right?"

"Right," Tony echoed.

"Of course not," Ziva said.

"Good," Gibbs said. "Then I'll see you all back here early tomorrow morning."

xxx

The first thing Tim did when he came home was to turn on his television. It was a form of self-flagellation, he knew, but he needed to know what people were saying.

As he had predicted, Denny's escape was the topic on everyone's lips. As he zapped through all his news channels - and simultaneously surfed their websites - he listened to experts criticizing prison security, politicians talking about the budgets of prison upkeep and the mounting costs of their penal system, old news clips from 22 year ago being rerun, amateur profilers detailing who Denny was and just why everyone should be mortally afraid of him, criminology professors talking about Denny's past and his psyche and even the elderly father of one of Denny's victims. Watching that interview hurt. On one channel Tim saw the prison director being interviewed and he was impressed with how the man coolly explained procedures and protocols at the prison, never once apologizing for the prison break. He even saw a sound bite of Fornell filmed outside the prison early in the morning, promising FBI's full and undivided attention to the manhunt.

Johnny Langston was mentioned here and there. A little kid turning in his brother was after all a heart-tugging story. But so far no one had put John Langston, scared 12-year-old, together with Timothy McGee, NCIS agent involved in the manhunt. He was grateful for that. And a call to his mother revealed that no one had contacted them either. But Tim knew that the longer Denny was at large, the bigger the story would get, and sooner or later reporters would start digging in what had happened to his family and Tim wanted to avoid that at all costs. As Ziva had pointed out; the family's cover wasn't exactly airtight. It would only take one tenacious reporter who was good at research and deduction, and then they would be first page news again.

Many hours later he had finally had enough. The TV couldn't tell him anything he didn't already know. He turned off the television, ate a quick late night snack, and then got ready for bed, as per Gibbs' orders.

Once Tim lay in his bed, his mind turned towards the other main concern of the day. His friends finding out hadn't been anywhere near as bad as he had feared. They had reacted with surprise, pity, awkwardness and sympathy, but no one had been angry or disgusted with him or blamed him. It had been nothing like last time. Of course, his team had only had to experience it from afar and across time. Not like his friends and the people on the base when it happened. They had all lived in fear of the Cowboy for months and pretty much everyone knew someone who had been personally affected by his actions.

Still, even though everyone had reacted favorably, he wasn't the least bit sorry he hadn't told them before and he still really wished it could've stayed secret. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his past, not really. He knew that he was not at fault for anything Denny had done, and he knew that he had done the right thing, even though it had hurt him more than anyone could possibly imagine. And it wasn't that he didn't trust his team, he did. He hadn't really been worried that they would suddenly turn their backs on him. In Gibbs' team, you were only ever judged on your own merits, he knew that. Hell, Ziva's brother had murdered Kate, but they had still welcomed Ziva as one of their own and trusted her completely. But Tim had spent a lot of time building a life and a persona that was totally separate from the events of his childhood. Though he knew that that year had had a major imprint on who he had become – for instance, he knew he would never have chosen NCIS if it hadn't happened – he stilled liked to believe that he was his own man, through and through. Being around people who had no idea that he was the Cowboy's brother had been a huge relief. No matter what they thought of him, now that they knew, it would always color their opinion about him, whether they realized it or not. Maybe nothing would change, but just knowing that they knew would be difficult for him.

He rolled over on his side, mushing up his pillow and rubbing his eyes. He shouldn't be thinking about this now. It was a problem of the future. His – their! – first priority had to be to find Denny. Everyone seemed so worried that he would switch sides and suddenly side with his brother. Intellectually he knew that it was their job to factor in all possibilities, but emotionally he felt insulted by them. Didn't they have more faith in him than that? He had no illusions about his brother; he knew that a lot of lives depended on them finding him – the sooner the better. Denny might be in full flight mode right now, only caring about his own survival, but if he got away and started to feel safe, if he had the chance to settle down, even just for a short time, then it was only a matter of time until he found his first new victim.

And that was something Tim just could not see himself doing. Standing over one of his brother's victims, photographing, sketching, gathering hairs, fibers, blood samples. Feeling lifeless eyes staring accusingly at him. Not again.

It took him at least an hour of tossing and turning before he fell into an uneasy sleep.

His last conscious thought was to wonder where his brother was sleeping tonight.

xxx

Unbeknownst to McGee, across town, his team had gathered in Gibbs' basement. They hadn't planned it, they had just shown up one by one, nodding greetings to each other, but unsurprised to see each other.

Gibbs was at his work table, carving decorations into a piece of wood, destined to become who-knew-what. Ziva stood leaning with her back against the wall underneath the small basement window, her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. Tony was restlessly picking at the tools that were scattered around the work bench. Abby was sitting on the stairs, nursing a cup of tea. Where she had found a teabag in Gibbs' kitchen was anybody's guess. Ducky sat on a stool next to the work bench.

"Poor Timmy," Abby said morosely.

"He has always been rather private, has he not?" Ziva commented. "I have never really thought about it before, but it is as if every time he tells us something about his past, you can see him pause for a minute as if he is deciding what he is going to tell and what he is not going to tell."

"That's because Tony always teases him about everything he tells us," Abby chimed in.

"Hey!" Tony said indignantly.

"And even his sister," Ziva continued. "He is on very good terms with her, but before the case she was involved in, I had hardly even heard him mention that she existed."

"That's because he didn't want Tony to try to date her," Abby said.

"Hey!" Tony protested again. "Stop making me the bad guy."

Gibbs straightened his back and blew wood remnants from his chisel. "McGee has no obligation to tell us anything about his private life, as long as it's not directly affecting his work. None of us do."

"But we're friends, Boss," Tony protested. "We don't just work together, we're good friends. At least we're supposed to be. I can understand if he doesn't tell Janice in reception every intimate detail of his life, but sharing with friends is how you become friends. He didn't tell us about his sister, he didn't tell us about his book… What else is he hiding? Does he have an evil twin out there? A wife and eight kids? A kingdom? If he doesn't tell us things like this, then, do we really know him?"

"Don't say that!" Abby got up from her seat, sloshing tea over the rim of the mug as she put it down a bit too forcefully on the stair and stalked threateningly over to him, gesticulating wildly. "We do know Tim. We know the present Tim, and that's the Tim that counts. Who cares about what happened when he was a kid! The Tim of today is our friend and he has never been anything but a very, very good friend. So what if he keeps a few secrets? We all have secrets. And if you so much as think about abandoning him now, Tony DiNozzo, then I don't want to be your friend anymore. Tim's hurting. He needs us. And if you leave him now, then you are no better than those jerks who called themselves his friends when he was a kid."

Tony looked shocked at the outburst. "Abby…"

"Calm down, Abigail," Ducky said, putting an arm around her shoulders, pulling her back from Tony a little. "Tony wasn't suggesting anything of the sorts. But sometimes, when you hear things like this, you feel hurt that your friend didn't feel you could be trusted with that information." He cast an eye at Gibbs, who shrugged a tad apologetically. That Gibbs hadn't told Ducky about his first wife and daughter had been a sore spot between them for a long time, but they had worked through it. So Ducky could sympathize with Tony's feelings. Tony and Tim's relationship wasn't that much different from his own and Gibbs'.

"Yeah, Abs," Tony said, still looking a little shell-shocked. "I wasn't going to leave him or anything. I would never do that. I want to help him too. I just thought—I thought he trusted us, is all."

"He trusts us just fine, DiNozzo," Gibbs said. "But this is about family. Anything is fair game when it's about family."

"And we already know that he can be incredibly protective of his family," Ducky said.

"Family is complicated," Ziva agreed. "You cannot control how you feel about your family and there are always unresolved issues. You never stop hoping that bad relationships will turn good, that one day everything will magically resolve itself. No matter how old you get or how far away you move, they are always there, inside your brain, nagging away at you. I have no doubt that McGee still loves his brother deeply, even if he does not want to, or pretends that he does not. Some things you just cannot help. The ones closest to us are often the ones who hurt us the deepest."

"I don't know if I think all that much about the rest of his family either," Tony said bitterly. "I didn't like the bit about him being home alone so much when it was all happening, having to take care of himself. I know his sister was sick, but still. How could they let that happen? Speaking from experience, nothing makes you feel more lonely than being neglected by your family, no matter the reason."

"But it wasn't just being left home alone, was it?" Abby said angrily. "His world was tumbling down around him and he was left without anyone to talk to, or anyone to lean on. How do you get through something like that without any support? He was just a kid, for god's sake. Did you know that Denny killed Tim's best friend's sister? His best friend in the whole world, and his brother destroyed that. Tim told me that his friend turned his back on him, even beat him up, because of it. How could Denny do that? I mean, I've been doing this job for long enough now, that I know that people are capable of pretty much every cruel act you can think of, but to do that to his little brother who he professed to adore!"

"I almost feel a little cheated," Tony admitted. "I always thought McGee had had a pretty normal childhood. I thought he was the one of us who 'got away'. But now it turns out he's just as damaged as the rest of us."

"I have always thought of Timothy as a naturally resourceful and mature young man," Ducky chimed in. "Deeply loyal to those he cares about. Those traits were probably necessary for his emotional survival. However," he held up a finger, "Timothy is also a very sensitive and empathic person. He may have survived, but it would not have been an easy process for him. We all know how close the emotion of guilt is for him and how quickly it manifests in him. It's not difficult to see how that was born in his childhood. He sent his brother to prison, in effect delaying his sister's life-saving treatment and breaking his family apart. How he must have questioned his decisions! A remarkable feat for someone so young, for sure, but alas it has left permanent personality traits with him. Had he not been a close friend of mine, I would have thought it a fascinating manifestation of personality development. Now, however, I can only feel lament at the fact that the things he had to go through scarred him for life."

"Poor Timmy," Abby said again. "What do we do now? He needs us, but I don't know what to do. How do we help him?"

Gibbs put his chisel down with a bang. "This happened 22 years ago. McGee isn't a fragile 12-year-old who needs our protection and coddling. That part of his life is over. He's still the same guy as yesterday. We all know him. This changes nothing. He doesn't need us to pity him, he just needs us to stand by him the same way we have always stood by each other when times have been rough. He _needs_ us to catch his brother, to give him some peace of mind again. That's what he needs and that's what we're going to do."

"Right Boss," Tony said, straightening up. "Nothing has changed. We'll treat him normally."

"No, not completely normally," Abby said. "At least not you."

"I'm sorry?" Tony said surprised.

"Tony, you are under no circumstances allowed to tease McGee about this," Abby said sternly.

"Of course I won't," Tony protested.

"I mean it, Tony!" Abby said, wagging her finger at him. "This is a very traumatic event in Tim's life and I don't think he can take it."

"Seriously, Abby, what kind of person do you think I am?" Tony said affronted. "I know that this is dragging up a lot of old history for him and that he's hurting right now. Teasing him would only be cruel."

"And you're not cruel," Abby said, more calmly. "I know that. But you can be too quick sometimes and you don't think things through, you just blurt them out. I'm asking you to think before you speak."

"I promise," Tony said, holding his hands up in a surrender position. "I'll think before I speak."

"If you can remember to," Ziva said pointedly.

Gibbs smirked and bent back over his woodwork. Ducky, reading his body language, quickly took his leave.

"Ladies. Gentlemen. It's getting quite late. Timothy has undoubtedly already retired for the night, and if we are to be of any help to him in the morning, we should also take some rest. Good night, all."

Taking the hint, all the others also said their good nights and filed out of the basement.

Abby, being last in line, stopped in the middle of the stairs. "Gibbs?"

"Don't worry, Abby," Gibbs said, not looking up. "He's going to be fine."

"I don't think I can't not worry," Abby said.

Gibbs lifted his head and smiled at her. "Worry, then. But he's still going to be fine."

Abby smiled tightly at him. "Good night, Gibbs."

"Good night, Abs."

xxx

TBC…

xxx

**A/N:** We're just about halfway through now! Thank for being so patient and sticking with me. And a million thanks for all the wonderful reviews!


	9. Chapter 9

"Aha!"

The outburst originated from Tony's desk, and Ziva raised her head, only marginally interested. But she knew from experience that he had made a discovery that he desperately wanted to share and he wouldn't stop until he had. So she obliged him. "What?"

"I've figured out why McGee changed his name." Tony looked inordinately pleased with himself.

"Really?" Ziva said condescendingly. "It took you this long? Because I understood it perfectly when he explained the circumstances to us yesterday."

"Yeah, sure, I got it then too," Tony said patronizingly, "But now I know why he changed his whole name instead of keeping his first name like his parents did."

Ziva sighed and rolled her eyes. "Okay, I will bite. Why did he change his name?"

Tony grinned. "It was because of his middle name."

Ziva waited, but after a moment it was obvious he was waiting for her to ask. "And his middle name was…?"

"It was Wayne."

Ziva was quiet for a moment, then, "Wayne?" Her eyebrows made a surprised trip up her forehead. "His full name was John Wayne Langston?"

Tony's maniacal grin was all the answer she needed.

"I am surprised he waited that long to change it," Ziva said drily. "What could his parents have been thinking? And with the press nicknaming his brother 'the Cowboy', I do not blame him for not wanting to be associated with that."

"That, and John Wayne Gacy," Tony pointed out.

"Who?" Ziva frowned.

"He was a serial killer too, active in the 70's. Raped and killed more than 30 men and boys, mostly teenagers."

"Yikes." Ziva made a grimace. "Sharing the name of one serial killer and the DNA of another. I would have changed my name too."

Suddenly Tony started doing sawing motions across his throat, indicating she should shut up. She turned her head and saw McGee exiting the elevator. He didn't seem to notice that they had been talking about him when he walked in.

"Anything?" he asked, with just a hint of desperation in his voice.

Ziva shook her head, hating to disappoint him. "We have no new information, we would have called you if anything had happened. Are you okay, McGee? You look tired."

Tony also scrutinized his face. "Yeah, have you slept at all, Probie? The circles under your eyes look like moon craters."

"I'm fine," McGee said, sitting down at his desk and logging onto his computer. His first order of business was to go through every police report from the greater D.C. area, to see if any murders had been reported that might have been Denny, but there were no rapes or murders that even remotely matched his M.O. It gave him a tiny bit of comfort.

"McGee, can I ask you a question?"

McGee looked at Tony in surprise. "Since when do you ask permission to pry into my personal life?"

Tony looked affronted. "What makes you think I'm going to ask something personal?"

McGee just raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, okay," Tony said. "I was just wondering about your name change."

"Seriously?" McGee frowned. "You're still hung up on that?"

"Well, yeah," Tony said, as if it was obvious.

"All right," McGee sighed, figuring that it was easier to just get it over with. "Shoot."

"Where did Tim come from? Why did you choose that name?"

McGee scrutinized Tony's face, but couldn't find any trace of teasing, only honest curiosity. "Do you remember me telling you that after I saw Denny murder a woman, I was found by an NIS agent?" he began. As the others nodded he continued. "His name was Timothy Harlan. I only ever called him Agent Harlan, but still. He— he did more than just find me that night. For some reason he decided to take me under his wings. He kept checking up on me, and not just because of the case, but because he liked me and wanted to help me. He was really great to me, a big support. He always had time for me, answered all of my questions. He guided me through some really difficult times. He was— well, he was kind of my hero. So when I decided to change my name, that was really the only one that popped up in my head. It was the only one with any kind of positive meaning at the time. The only way to really thank him for everything he'd done for me."

"He sounds like a good man," Ziva commented.

"He was," McGee said, then he carefully looked around to make sure Gibbs wasn't in the vicinity. "I'm really glad he wasn't called Jethro, though."

Tony snorted with surprised laughter. "Damn right!"

McGee's phone rang. It was Gibbs, who wanted him in MTAC. When he let himself into MTAC, he was surprised to hear a familiar voice over the speakers.

"I don't know how else I can help you, Gibbs. I chased the guy for months, but truth be told, I never found him. It was your boy who found out and turned him in."

McGee hurried down to the floor space in front of the huge video screen. "Agent Harlan!" he said happily, his face shining excitedly, not noticing the thoughtful look on Gibbs' face as his boss looked at him.

The man on the screen broke out into a huge grin. He was older than Tim remembered him, of course, but he still had those warm eyes that had always looked at him with so much encouragement. "Hey, kiddo. Look at you! How are you?"

"Well," McGee said. "Normally, things are pretty great. Right now, though…"

"Yeah, it sucks, all right," Harlan agreed. "You were my first thought when I turned on the news yesterday and I wanted to call you. I'm glad your boss contacted me, I wouldn't have known where to find you otherwise."

Tim looked down at his shoes, looking embarrassed. "I'm sorry I didn't keep in touch. I wanted to, but dad forbade me."

"Hey, not your fault, kiddo!" Harlan said forcefully. "I always knew your father was behind it. I never blamed you."

"Yeah," Tim began. "But when I grew up—"

"When you grew up, you joined the agency," Harlan interrupted him. "You have no idea how proud I was when I heard that."

Tim looked up shyly. "I… I changed my name too. I'm Tim now."

Harlan smiled. "I know. I heard. You have no idea how honored I feel. I'm so proud of the man you've become, kiddo. Now, tell me all about yourself."

Unnoticed by the pair, Gibbs turned around and left the room. As Harlan had been the original case agent, Gibbs had seen it as pertinent to interview him, though he couldn't deny that he had had ulterior motive, and luckily, Harlan had, without any prodding, fulfilled his wishes. He had been on with Harlan for about an hour, talking about a lot more than just the case. Harlan had in fact hardly mentioned Denny, he had been much too interested in Tim, and Gibbs had greedily taken the opportunity to learn a lot more about his agent than he had ever known.

He had never taken much interest in his agents' personal lives, just as he himself kept his personal life very private. He had always been content with knowing only the parts his people volunteered, as long as there was nothing that affected work, trusting that they told him the things he needed to know. Only, he now realized that where Tony, Abby and Ducky were very generous and outspoken about their past, McGee was much more taciturn. Whatever stories he shared were generally carefully selected and edited. After speaking with Harlan he now felt that he understood his agent better. He understood where his need to fit in and please everyone came from. He understood where the unsecure Probie he'd first met had come from and why he had behaved towards authority figures the way he did. Everyone knew that Gibbs had a soft spot for kids, and some of the things Harlan told him about young Tim had been tough, even though he knew that Tim had grown up just fine. Especially one incident Harlan had told him had struck him hard.

_Harlan stood in the __Langstons' living room, looking at the burnt spots on the carpet, the shards of glass on the floor, the rocks scattered across the room. He felt anger burn in his chest. He didn't understand people. Who did this help? Who benefited from this? He understood that people was upset and angry about what had happened, he even sympathized with them. Dennis Langston could rot in hell for all he cared. But Dennis wasn't here anymore. Dennis would never be back here. He probably wouldn't even hear about this. The only one here was a lonely and scared 12-year-old boy, who had suffered every bit as much from what Dennis had done as the rest of the town had, probably even more than most of them. And now he was stuck playing the part of the monster to the angry townspeople while the real culprit was stuck in jail._

_Harlan's eyes fell on the boy. He sat sideways on the couch with his knees pulled up into his chest, his arms wrapped around them and his face buried in his arms. The cast on his arm from the school yard beating he had suffered was sooty and scruffy. He looked like misery incarnated. A rookie MP stood uneasily next to the couch, looking uncomfortable at being left in charge of a distraught child. Harlan nodded at him to leave them alone, and he disappeared gratefully._

_Harlan sat down next to him on the couch. "Hey, kiddo," he said, patting him on his good __arm. "How're you doing?"_

_The kid shrugged. _

_"You did a good job putting out those fires," Harlan continued. "Did you burn yourself?"_

_He shook his head._

_"Cut yourself on the glass?"_

_He started to shake his head, but changed it to a shrug._

_"Let me see," Harlan ordered gently._

_A hand came out of the nestled limbs, palm up, showing off Band-Aids on the ring finger and little finger._

_Harlan took the hand gently in his. "Took care of that yourself, too, did you? You're a very resourceful young man, aren't you?" He tugged on the hand. "Come on, kiddo, look at me."_

_The boy slowly lifted his head, revealing red-rimmed eyes and a dejected facial expression. _

_"Are you home alone tonight?" Harlan asked._

_He nodded and whispered, "Yes."_

_"Your parents are at the hospital." It was a statement, not a question._

_"Yes," he whispered again._

_"Didn't you call them and tell them what happened here tonight?"_

_"I tried," the boy said, the hitch in his voice betraying that he had been crying. "I couldn't get ahold of them. The nurse said that she would tell them to call me, but they haven't yet."_

_"Okay," Harlan said slowly. "Okay! What do you say we go to them?"_

_"To the hospital?" he asked surprised. "But they are with Sarah."_

_"They are your parents, too," Harlan said. "It's time they remembered that."_

_Harlan left two MPs with strict orders to guard the house and ushered the boy into his car. He was quiet on the drive over, and Harlan had the good sense not to push him. When they got to the hospital, he let the kid lead the way through the corridors._

_"Johnny!" a nurse called as they walked into the pediatric oncology ward. "What are you doing here so late?"_

_"I need to speak with the boy's parents," Harlan said, with one hand holding the kid's shoulder protectively. "Where are they?"_

_"They are with Sarah, of course," the nurse said. She looked at the boy with something akin to pity. "I'm afraid she's having a bad night."_

_He frowned worriedly. "Is she very bad? Can I see her?"_

_"She's asleep," the nurse told him. "She wouldn't even know you are here."_

_"Where are they?" Harlan asked again. _

_"Over here," the kid said, leading the way to his sister's room. They looked in through the glass pane in the door. Sarah was indeed asleep, or maybe unconscious, he couldn't tell. The nasal cannula looked so big against her bald little head. Alice Langston sat on the bed with her arms around Sarah, rocking her slightly. The Lieutenant Commander sat next to the bed with his back to the door. Alice looked very tired._

_"Maybe we shouldn't disturb them," the boy said uncertainly, but Harlan was already knocking on the door. _

_The Lieutenant Commander jerked at the sound, and looked behind him. He frowned when he saw Harlan and his son. Harlan beckoned him outside. He came to the door. "Harlan, what are you doing here?" he asked. "Is everything alright?"_

_Alice __Langston followed on her husband's heals. "Sweetheart? What's wrong?" She pulled her son into her arms. "Is it your arm? Is it bothering you?_

_The boy shook his head, letting himself be hugged with obvious relief. The sight all but broke Harlan's heart. The kid shouldn't have to go running across town to get a little comfort, it should be offered to him at home._

_"Then what—" the LCDR started, but Harlan interrupted him._

_"I came to inform you that I will be taking Johnny home with me tonight, and tomorrow I will be calling Child Protective Services."_

_The boy twisted around in his mother's arms to face Harlan, shock and hurt evident on his face. Harlan knew that he had just betrayed the boy's trust in him. He wanted to say 'Trust me, kiddo, bear with me, I only want to help you'. He knew he had to do something to really rattle the boy's parents. _

_Harlan __saw __Alice's arms tightening around her son. "No," she whispered._

_The Lieutenant Commander reacted in anger. "Absolutely not!" he shouted. "You have no right. You will not take another son from us!"_

_Harlan was just as angry. "I did not take Dennis from you. His own actions brought him to where he is today. But I will take Johnny if that's what it takes to protect him."_

_"Protect him!?" John __Langston shouted. "From us!?"_

_"Yes!" Harlan answered. "Leaving an injured and traumatized boy home alone overnight is neglect. He needs care and supervision, and you are giving him neither."_

_"We don't want to leave him alone—" Alice started, but she was interrupted by her husband._

_"Johnny __loves Sarah more than anything in the world. He understands why we can't be with him all the time."_

_"What Johnny wants or understands is of no matter," Harlan said. "You are the adults. You are the parents. It is your responsibility to care for all your children equally."_

_Red-faced with anger the LCDR pointed behind him. "Our daughter is dying in there!" he shouted._

_The boy flinched hard at those words, as if he'd been physically struck._

_"And your son could have died tonight!" Harlan shouted back with equal force. "Your house was attacked; __some idiot teenagers threw rocks and burning bottles through the windows. If Johnny had been asleep or even just on the second floor, the house could've burnt to the ground and Johnny with it."_

_Alice gasped, and turned her son around to face her. "Sweetheart, are you okay? Are you hurt?"_

_The LCDR also looked at his son, white-faced with shock. "Johnny? Is this true?"_

_The boy nodded. "They've come before," he said quietly. "But they usually just ring the doorbell and shout stuff, or leave dog poop on the steps. But tonight they were really angry. I think maybe they were drunk."_

_The LCDR took his son's face between his hands. "For god's sake, son, why haven't you told us?"_

_The boy wouldn't meet his father's eyes. "You had so many other things to worry about, with the transplant and the trial and all. It was nothing I couldn't manage. Sarah and Denny needs you more. Besides, I put the fires out. The house is fine."_

_"I don't care about the house!" the LCDR said, his frustration making him sound angry. "I care about you. You cannot keep things like this from us. You always have to tell us the truth."_

_"I'm sorry," the boy said quietly, looking down at his feet._

_"No," his mom said, stroking his hair. "You don't have to be sorry. Your dad isn't angry with you, he just sounds like it. And it's we who should be sorry. We haven't been fair to you. This thing is happening to all of us."_

_The LCDR looked at Harlan. "Okay, Agent Harlan. You've made your point. I'll take my son home now, if you don't mind," he said dismissively._

_Harlan opened his mouth to protest, but Alice beat him to it._

_"No," she said. "I'll take him home. You can stay with Sarah tonight, John."_

_Harlan smiled. That was the outcome he had been hoping for._

_"I'm not going to let you stay alone in a vandalized house, Alice," the Lieutenant Commander said gruffly._

_"I've assigned a protection detail for the night," Harlan said. "They won't come to any harm."_

_"And I need some time with my son," Alice said decisively. _

_So Harlan drove Alice and her son home, not mentioning the social services again, but vowing to keep an eye on the situation so that he wouldn't have to make good on his threat in the future._

xxx

When McGee came out of MTAC a half-hour later, he looked much more relaxed than he had when he came in that morning. Gibbs nodded contentedly to himself. No matter how much McGee claimed his independence, it was obvious that he needed people to talk things through with, and sometimes it was easier to talk to someone who had been there, someone you didn't feel the need to hide things from. He wasn't very happy with McGee for keeping a secret like this from him all these years, but at the same time he understood why, since he had been there himself. Some things were just too painful and too personal to share.

xxx

TBC…


	10. Chapter 10

Gibbs kept the team mostly at the yard during the day. Mostly because there wasn't much to do, there were no new leads, no sightings, nowhere to look. The FBI was doing most of the tedious footwork – door-knocking and talking to the crazies on the hot line and such – so NCIS was left with following paper trails and physical evidence, which there was very little of.

Tony grumbled of course, he missed the action. "I just hate sitting around."

"What do you want to do?" Ziva asked. "Just drive around and hope to spot him in a crowd?"

"Honestly?" Tony asked. "Yes! Maybe we'll get lucky."

But what they all knew, but didn't want to voice because of McGee, was that there were only two things that could help them find Denny right now. The first was sheer, dumb luck – like running into him at Starbucks – and the other was if he committed a crime and as such left them more evidence to investigate. But everyone knew that McGee's worst nightmare was that his brother would hurt someone, so they kept quiet.

Tony and Ziva were reading through the old case files, both the ones they had found in Denny's cell and the original files they had on record, to compare them and see what Denny had been focused on and if he'd made any notes, but McGee just couldn't stomach them. He couldn't look at the crime scene photos or read the autopsy protocols. He didn't want to know the gory details. The looks of anger on his teammates' faces and the furtive glances they kept shooting in his direction were enough.

He was, however, going through the court transcripts from Denny's trial. They were much more level headed and clinical than the reports frustrated cops wrote when they were in the midst of a tough case. It was still much more information than he'd ever wanted to know, though. His brother was a sadist; there was no other word for it. The things he had done – the things he had taken pleasure in doing – to these poor women were enough to make his stomach turn. He forewent lunch and settled for letting vending machine coffee burn a hole through his stomach lining. He suddenly felt a new sort of sympathy towards his father. His father had gone to the trial every single day. Tim couldn't even imagine what it must have felt like to sit there and have his son's crimes thrown in his face every single day. No wonder his dad had hardened the way he had.

When he read his own testimony, he was surprised by how coherent and factual he had been. He remembered going though that day with terrorizing anxiousness. But, as he compared it with the other testimonies, he realized that both the prosecutor and the defense lawyer had taken it very easy with him, only really asked him about the bare facts – and he had always been really good with facts.

He swallowed hard. It felt like he had been living with a lump in his throat and a burning hole in his gut for two days now. His blood pressure had to be skyrocketing. Just like Tony, he wanted to do something! It felt like time was wasting away and there was something important he should be doing, but he had forgotten what it was. There was a sense of urgency that he just couldn't meet, and it was stressing him out.

Fornell stopped by in the afternoon to share the FBI's meager results. He was visibly frustrated. Denny's method of escape was still unknown and there hadn't been a credible sighting since the mugging the day before. "He has to be somewhere!" Fornell complained. "How can a so sought after man be so completely invisible? He has to eat somehow, right? He must be hiding somewhere, holed up in an abandoned basement or something."

"Or he stole another car right after abandoning the first and is now driving around small country roads out of sight several states away," Gibbs pointed out.

Fornell looked at him with a pained expression. "Are you trying to give me an aneurysm? Give me some positive news, Gibbs! Have you figured out where he's heading yet?"

Gibbs sighed. "No. Ducky thinks that the only emotional ties he might have are either for his family or for the murder sites. We know he hasn't tried to contact his family, and the murder sites are on the other side of the country. If he's heading there it's going to be a while before we find out. Those are the only theories we have, besides fleeing the country or hiding."

Fornell left, unsatisfied. McGee knew how he felt.

When Gibbs felt that frustration was running high enough, he called it quits. "Let's pack it in," he said.

McGee immediately looked like he wanted to protest, but Gibbs shot him down before he could speak. "Uh uh. He's been in prison since he was 18, so there's no bank account, no credit cards, no phone records or any other paper trails to follow. The only ones he's likely to contact are his family, which we know he hasn't done, one of his groupies who we are already keeping track of, or an unknown accomplice. But so far we haven't found a single tie between him and another living soul, so that seems highly unlikely. And even though his mug shot has been on TV at least once every 15 minutes the last two days, there have been no confirmed sightings, so there's nowhere to start looking. There's hardly any physical evidence, and what we have, we have finished analyzing already. So unless you want to spend the night sitting at the bus station, staring at the ticket line, there's literally nothing more we can do. So go home. Get some rest. Come up with some new ideas, and start fresh in the morning."

Tony shot up from his seat. "Come on, McGee," he said. "I'll buy you a drink."

"No thanks, Tony," McGee said, his eyes still on the computer screen.

"Aw, come on, Probie! It's early yet! We'll go have a drink, eat some peanuts, relax, wind down…"

"I don't want to drink right now," McGee said. "I'm not in the mood."

"Okay," Tony said. "Pizza then? Somewhere really family friendly."

"I could eat," Ziva piped up.

McGee sighed. "No offence, guys, but I'm really not looking for company tonight."

"I know," Tony said, exchanging a look with Ziva. "But I think you should anyway."

"As much as it pains me to utter the words," Ziva said. "Tony is right. Sitting home alone, brooding, is not what you need right now. Come out with us."

So they went to a brightly lit, music-filled, teenager-managed pizzeria where they placed their orders at the counter and then went to find a table. McGee had been very quiet during the car ride, and was now spacing out on them again. He was fiddling with a plastic covered toothpick from a bowl on the table, his thoughts miles away as he stared sightlessly through the window. Ziva exchanged a worried look with Tony, who nodded at her. A distraction was needed.

"How are your parents holding up?" Ziva asked.

McGee flinched a little as he returned to reality. "Mom's anxious and nervous. Mostly for my sake, I think. She keeps expecting Denny to show up on her doorstep, but that's just wishful thinking on her part, I'm sure. As strange as it might sound, she really wants to see him, she always has. She never really got to see him after he was arrested. She hardly ever made it to the trial, she had to stay with Sarah, as Dad was at the trial every day. I think the last time she spoke to him was the day he came to the hospital to donate the bone marrow to Sarah."

"So you got to go through with the transplant even though he had been arrested?" Ziva asked.

"Yes," McGee looked a little surprised at the question. The fact that Sarah was still alive should've answered that for them. "Dad got a lawyer who found a sympathetic judge. I wasn't there, but Mom told me years later that he was brought there in chains with several guards. She sat with him during the prep for procedure, but he wouldn't talk to her. It really hurt her that he wouldn't even acknowledge her and she's been trying ever since to get him to answer her. So I think she's hoping he's going to want some kind of reunion, but I just don't see that happening. He's never wanted anything to do with us."

"Isn't that a good thing, though?" Tony asked. "I can't imagine why any of you would want to see him again, not after what he did."

"Do not listen to him," Ziva said, reaching across the table to put a hand on McGee's arm. "He is an only child. He does not know."

Ziva and McGee shared a knowing look, sharing memories of siblings lost, in one way or another.

"You're right," McGee said. "He doesn't know." He turned to Tony. "I don't think you understand how conflicted I was back then, Tony. It was like Denny was two personas and I couldn't figure out how to marry them together. On the one hand there was the Cowboy, who was a monster who did unimaginably cruel things to women and on the other hand there was Denny, my brother who I loved and missed so much that it physically hurt. I wanted the Cowboy in prison where he couldn't hurt anyone else, but I wanted my brother to come home. Denny was the guy who taught me how to ride a bike and throw a curve ball. How could he be the same guy who murdered my best friend's sister? It took me years to come to terms with it and Mom's still struggling with it. Because we never got any answers. We never got to hear Denny's side of the story. He went from being our son and brother to being a cold blooded murderer overnight, and we never got an explanation. If it was someone you loved, if it was your dad who suddenly turned out to be something so unexpected, wouldn't you want answers too? Want closure?"

"If it were my dad…" Tony said thoughtfully. "Yes, I think I understand. You're right. Dad has kept secrets from me my whole life and all I've ever wanted were answers. And it really sucks that he never tells me anything. I would want to know, too."

Ziva smiled at him, quickly forgiving his thoughtlessness. "Fathers will always treat us like children, no matter how old we get," she said. "They always think they know best."

"What about your dad, McGee?" Tony asked. "How's he handling all of this?"

"He's just fine, apparently," Tim said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

Tony's face scrunched up in surprise at Tim's tone of voice. "Apparently?"

"I haven't spoken to him since yesterday morning. Mom tells me that he's been going to work as usual, which for him means leaving home at 6 a.m. and not coming home until 10 p.m. at the earliest. He's acting as if nothing is happening, keeping up the front that nothing's wrong. I'm actually disappointed with him, though I don't know why. I shouldn't be surprised. He's always put work first. I guess I just thought that this, at least, would affect him a little. I thought that he would be man enough to stay by my mother's side at a time that is difficult for her. But as usual, I was just kidding myself." He looked up and saw that Tony had a very puzzled look on his face. "What?"

"Well, I guess I'm just a bit surprised," Tony said. "I always thought you had a pretty good relationship with you dad."

McGee snorted. "Whatever gave you that idea? I hardly ever mention him."

"I know," Tony said. "It's just, once a few years ago you said something… you said that you could tell you dad everything or that you told your dad everything, or something like that. I guess I just thought that that sounded nice."

McGee smiled mirthlessly. "Tell him everything? Of course, I did. I didn't have much choice. He demanded complete honesty. Lying or even omitting the truth just wasn't allowed. He wanted to know everything. When he gave you that look… I guess, after Denny, he just wanted control. He didn't want to be sidelined by his family again. But it was pretty tough to live with."

"Your dad was really that tough?" Ziva asked with a frown.

"Not at first," Tim said wistfully. "Not before Denny happened. Denny pretty much ruined dad for the rest of us. He was so ashamed of being the father of the Cowboy, so ashamed of having raised a murderer, that he could never be a real father again. At least not to me. It was easier with Sarah, she was always his little girl, still is. But I think Dad was actually the one who had the hardest time after we found out. He felt like a failure. He stayed with us only as long as he had too, until Sarah was well again. As soon as he had us settled in Virginia, he started a long stretch of one overseas or ship bound tour after another, always volunteering for extended tours. It felt like we hardly ever saw him after that. He rose up in rank right quick, but the qualities that makes him a great Admiral, are the same qualities that makes him a bad father. Always expecting to be obeyed and always punishing when he isn't."

Ziva was frowning. "I don't understand why he could stay fatherly to your sister but not to you? Is it because you reminded him about your brother?"

McGee grimaced. "I've thought a lot about that over the years. I have to admit that I was pretty jealous of Sarah when I was younger because of it. But I think it was easier for him to be a father to Sarah in part because she was so little when everything happened that she didn't remember how much he'd screwed up with Denny, and in part because she's a girl, he didn't have the same expectations on her to honor the family traditions and carry on our proud name. He had no problems showing her affection, he could hug and kiss her all he wanted, because he didn't have to worry about her growing up to become a weak man. Now, don't look at me like that, Ziva," he said, noticing her sour look. "I know full well that women can do anything men can do. I'm not agreeing with him, I'm just trying to explain his mindset to you. He grew up with a career driven, military father, and he became just like grandpa. Had Sarah decided to go into the Navy, Dad would've been elated, but he would never dream of trying to push her in that direction. She has always been free to do whatever she wants."

He was interrupted as their pizzas were delivered, and he paused to take a bite from a slice. He was hungrier than he had expected.

"Did he want you to go into the Navy?" Tony asked, knowing quite a lot about fathers' expectations.

Tim nodded. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and took a gulp of soda before continuing. "Yeah, sure he did. The thing is, though, he never pushed me towards it. He didn't even mention it, but then he never talked to me at all about possible career choices. After what happened with Denny, I think he lost a lot of confidence in his own parental role. He knew that he had pushed Denny a lot, and probably felt guilty about it and I think he was afraid to do it to me. He never once tried to steer me towards the Navy, but somewhere deep inside he expected me to choose it anyway, on my own. After all, of all his children, I was the sensible one. I think he had convinced himself that the reason Denny had been so adamant against it was because there was something wrong in his head, but since I was completely normal, I should have come to that decision on my own."

Seeing Tony eyeing his plate McGee stopped again to eat, not wanting to risk his food ending up in the wrong mouth. His teammates were suspiciously quiet and unquestioning, letting him set the pace. He was surprised at how good it felt to talk about this part of his life and how easily the words came.

"In a way, him not trying to persuade me, put even more pressure on me," he continued. "I always knew he wanted me in the Navy, even though he didn't say anything. I knew that he expected me to make up for Denny's failures. To put aside my own plans and interests to restore the family honor. I was supposed to replace Denny and take his place in the family. I was supposed to live up to all the expectations Dad had had for Denny. Had Denny not been a murderer, if Denny had gone into the Navy like Dad wanted, then I don't think he would've cared about what profession I chose.

"When it became clear to him that I wasn't going to go for the Navy, I think he felt horribly betrayed. I was breaking a century-old tradition. But after a while he changed his focus. In his mind, I was free do whatever I wanted, as long as I was the best at it and made a real career out of it. So he couldn't understand why I went to John Hopkins if I wasn't getting an MD. He couldn't understand why I went to MIT when I wasn't planning to be the new Bill Gates. He couldn't understand why I stopped after my masters, why I didn't go for a Ph.D. When I started NCIS he expected me to make a rocket career. Considering how long I've been with the agency, he expected me to have set my sights on Vance's chair by now, and at the very least be sitting on Gibbs'. He doesn't understand how to measure success except by climbing the ladder and he doesn't understand that I'm happy where I am. That I am successful. He doesn't want me to have a job, he wants me to have a career and I have failed to live up to that."

"If he was that hung up on traditions, what did he say when you changed your name?" Tony asked.

McGee felt a smile tug at his lips. Tony's obsession about his name change was for some reason starting to amuse him. To Tim, it honestly wasn't a big deal anymore. It had felt so natural to shed his old name and step into a new one, one he thought fit his personality much better, anyway. He remembered when he had first broached the subject with his parents. He had started with his mother, knowing he'd find a much more sympathetic ear there. It had been the night Agent Harlan had taken him to the hospital and yelled at his parents. To his surprise, it was his mother who had taken him home, leaving his dad at the hospital overnight. Alone-time with his mom was a rare treat, it had hardly happened once after Sarah's diagnosis. But that night they had sat across from each other at the kitchen table, drunken hot cocoa and talked.

_"You're such an old 12-year-old," his mother said. "Always acting so mature, always so responsible. You have to stop that." She smiled at him, to show she didn't mean anything bad by it. "You have to let yourself be a kid sometimes. I'm very proud of you and how you have handled everything these past few weeks. But everything isn't your responsibility. Yes, Sarah is very sick and we need to spend a lot of time with her and with the things concerning her care. And, yes, this mess that Denny has put us in is costing us a lot of pain and grief and time and money. But you are important too. You have to be brave enough to stand up to your father and me when we drop the ball. I wish I could promise you that everything will be better, that we won't forget about you again, but with the situation being what it is, the only thing I can promise is that I will do my very best not to let it happen again. But if I fail, you have to speak up. I won't allow you to feel abandoned like this again. You have to feel like you can be honest with us about anything, even if it's something bad about us. We won't be mad at you. You have the right to demand our attention. Okay?"_

_He nodded. "Okay."_

_"Okay," his mother said. "Good. Is there something you want to talk about now?"_

_He looked down, swirling his cocoa around in his cup, wondering if this was a good time to bring up the things he had thought about lately. He didn't want to risk hurting her feelings._

_"Come on," his mom cajoled. "There's no need to shy in front of me."_

_"Mom?"_

_"Go ahead."_

_"I—I don't want to live here anymore," he said quickly._

_His mother nodded thoughtfully. Seeing the state of the house when they came home had been both a shock and an eye opener for her. "Here in this house or here on base?" she asked gently._

_"Both," he said. "I don't want to stay here at all. Everyone has turned against me, I don't have any friends left. And people keep staring at me, wherever I go. I hate it."_

_"I hear you," his mother said. "And I understand. I don't want to stay here any longer either. We'll never be part of this community again. But we're going to have to wait a while. We can't leave for good until Sarah is well enough to travel. And we will have to stay in town until after Denny's trial. You understand that, right?"_

_"Yes, Mom, I already knew that," he assured her, grateful that she seemed to be on his side._

_"But maybe we don't have to stay in the house," his mother continued. __"I think we're done with the base, don't you? We could move off the base and get an apartment. Maybe somewhere close to the hospital, so Dad and I can be home more. How about that?"_

_"I'd like that," he said. "But what about school? Do I have to go back to school? The doctors said I'm well enough to go back." He ran a hand over his scalp and the red scar where he had had the sutures taken out just a few days ago._

_"Do you want to go back?" His mother looked at him searchingly._

_"No." He shook his head vehemently. __"Everybody hates me there. I was thinking maybe I could be home schooled for a while? I'm smart enough. I know I could do it."_

_His mom sighed. "I know you could do it too, and I wish there was a way to do it, but neither your dad nor I will be able to stay at home with you to teach you."_

_"Mom, I'm really scared to go back to school," he said baring his soul. __"I've been doing all my homework by myself while I've been home sick, why can't I just continue doing that?"_

_"We'll see, honey. I will talk to the principal, maybe we can work something out. Get you a tutor, maybe. He knows how advanced you are. It won't hurt you to miss a little school. And as soon as we move, you can change schools. We'll look into other opportunities for you."_

_"Okay," he said, a little disappointed that it hadn't been solved right there. He really hoped he wouldn't have to go back to his school again. But he still had the most difficult thing left to ask. Feeling his heart beat triple time he carefully said, "Mom... There's one more thing."_

_"Okay."_

_He looked down at his hands, not wanting to see the disappointment in his mother's eyes. "I— I don't think I want to be Johnny anymore."_

_"What do you mean?" His mother sounded confused._

_He forced himself to look her in the eyes. "I want to change my name, Mom."_

_"Change your name?" Her eyes popped open in surprise. "But honey! We picked your names very carefully. You are named after both you grandfathers. Two very brave men who love you very much._

_"I know. But it's the combination, Mom! I don't want to be John Wayne anymore. People have been calling me cowboy and other Wild West nicknames ever since I was a baby. And now they are calling Denny 'the Cowboy'. __And all the kids at school know my name is John Wayne and now, whenever I meet any of them, they call me little cowboy or cowboy junior and I hate it. It's not who I am! And even if we move, it's a given nickname for me, whenever someone hears my full name. I don't want anyone to ever call me that again. I want another name."_

_His mother __was quiet for a while. "Alright," she finally said. __"I guess I can understand that. I suppose it's going to take a while for your father and me to get used to calling you something else, but it's your decision, I won't fight you on it. We can ease into it, maybe change it at the same time as we move? Maybe when you start your new school? Have you given any thought about what you might like to be called?"_

_He felt relief flood over him. She wasn't upset! She wasn't hurt! "I was thinking… maybe… maybe Timothy?"_

_"Timothy?" she seemed surprised again. __"Like Agent Harlan?"_

_He nodded._

_"Timothy." His mother appeared to be tasting the name. "Timothy. Tim. This is my son, Tim. Yes, I think I will like that. Let's try it out for a while, see if it feels right for you." She smiled at him. "And I will talk to your dad for you. Come here." She held her arms open to him and he walked to the other side of the table and sat in her lap, even though he was really too tall to fit comfortably, and let himself be a child again, gaining strength and comfort from his mother's hugs._

xxx

TBC…


	11. Chapter 11

"Hello! Earth to Tim!"

McGee blinked and looked across the table at his teammates, who were both staring at him with equal parts exasperation and amusement. "Wha- what?"

"You kind of spaced out on us there, Probie," Tony smiled. "Again. Did you have a nice stroll down memory lane?"

McGee frowned. "What were we talking about?"

"Your dad's reaction to your name change," Tony reminded him.

"Oh, right," McGee said. "Well, he wasn't very happy about it. It was his name I was rejecting, after all. But I had Mom on my side and she helped convince him that this was just one more step towards removing Denny from our lives, which was all Dad really wanted. So he accepted it as part of our cover up."

"So why don't you have a middle name now?" Tony asked. "You could've kept John as a middle name. You know, like a peace offering?"

McGee fought the urge to roll his eyes. Tony really was like a dog with a bone about the name issue. But in truth, he didn't mind talking about it anymore. "You know, to most people, middle names don't mean that much, it's just something your mother uses to make a point when she's mad at you." McGee tried to explain. "To me, it made all the difference. I guess you already know what my middle name was?"

Tony nodded. "Wayne. John Wayne."

McGee waited for a heartbeat, but Tony didn't say anything else or comment on the name combination. He had simply answered a question. "That's right," McGee said. "So, as you can imagine, cowboy references just kept coming at me, wherever I went. I always thought it was really unfair, since it was Denny who was interested in the Wild West, and not me." He was quiet for a while, looking down at his own hands. "I wanted to keep John as a middle name. But Dad got really angry. He said that if his and his father's and his grandfather's name wasn't a good enough name to be called by, then I didn't deserve to have it at all. So I took it out."

"So who was Denny named after?" Tony asked. "It's usually the oldest son who gets saddled with Junior."

"Actually, I was never Junior," McGee said with a half-smile. "I was the fourth. John Langston the fourth. And Denny's named after my uncle, my Mom's older brother. He was killed in action in Vietnam. Besides, Denny's middle name is John, so he didn't get off scotch free either. Now, are there any other questions about my name, or could we perhaps talk about something else?"

Ziva smacked Tony on the arm. "Yes, Tony, enough already. Now pay the check and let's get going. It is getting late."

"Why am I paying?" Tony complained.

"Because you invited us out," Ziva demanded.

Tony grumbled some more for show, but pulled out his wallet and settled the bill.

xxx

McGee arrived home with a stomach full of pizza, feeling rather good. Tonight had been cathartic, and he hoped it would give him enough calm to get a good night's sleep. He parked in his assigned space in the parking lot behind his apartment building and locked the door behind him, but he hadn't even made it to his front door when his phone rang.

"McGee," he answered.

"McGee," Gibbs said. "A woman was assaulted in her home in Georgetown two hours ago."

McGee stopped dead in his tracks and felt his whole body go numb. A cold mass grew in his stomach and his hands started to tremble. There was a rushing sound in his ears and the walls of the hallway started to undulate and close in on him. He had to close his eyes and take a deep breath to keep from fainting right there. "Denny?" he asked hoarsely.

"Looks like it," Gibbs said. "The woman survived, but she's unconscious, so no one's been able to talk to her yet. Meet us at her house." He gave him the address.

McGee turned back and headed for his car again, walking in a trance, his mind whirling. This was what he had dreaded the most. Denny was active again, and many more lives would be ruined. He was glad that the woman had survived, but he knew that she had lived through a horrible ordeal, which would probably keep terrorizing her for a long time, perhaps giving her a life-long psychological trauma. Denny had screwed up another person's life and Tim hadn't been good enough or fast enough to stop it from happening.

He unlocked and opened the car door, sat down in the seat and was just about to stick the key into the ignition when he had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Panic started bubbling in him, but things moved so fast it never had time to fully emerge. For a fraction of a second he saw movement in the corner of his eye before a hand clamped over his mouth and a gun was pushed into his neck.

"Just stay still, Johnny, and everything will be all right," a calm voice said.

Tim didn't recognize the voice. How could he? They hadn't spoken for more than 20 years, and they had both been teenagers then. But there was no doubt in his mind as to who the voice belonged to. Who else would still call him Johnny?

When the hand over his mouth warily let go he simply said, "Denny." He tried to turn his head to look behind him, but the gun's prodding on his cheek reversed the motion.

"Have you missed me, little brother?" The tone of voice was so familiar that it made Tim's heart ache. He could actually hear Denny's crooked smile behind him.

"No," Tim lied. "And you didn't miss me either."

"I'm going to hand you a pair of handcuffs now," Denny said, without acknowledging Tim's statement. "I want you to cuff yourself to the steering wheel. And don't even think about reaching for your gun."

"You won't hurt me," Tim challenged him.

"Correction. I don't want to hurt you," Denny said, "It's not really the same thing, is it?" He let a pair of cuffs dangle in front of Tim's eyes. Tim slowly reached up and took them, cuffing one link over his left wrist, and then – after a small amount of hesitation – threading the chain through the steering wheel before cuffing the other link over his right wrist.

"Good boy," Denny said and removed the gun from his brother's head. There were some ruffling sounds, and then Tim heard the car door open. Denny walked around the back of the car, opened the passenger side door and slipped into the seat next to Tim. Tim turned his head and under the harsh light of the street lights in the parking lot, he saw for the first time the man his brother had grown in to. He was rather handsome, always had been, with chiseled features, brown eyes and dark brown hair. He looked a lot like their father, Tim reflected.

Denny smiled warmly at him, the way he always had done. Tim swallowed hard. That smile had been such a natural part of his life when he was younger. A mark of approval, something he always sought after and yearned for. Comfort and love. Friendship. His brother had meant so much to him, as a child he could've walked through fire to have that smile directed at him. Now it felt wrong. His brother was an escaped convict, what did he have to smile about?

"You've changed, little brother," Denny said. "It's been a long time."

"Denny," Tim said with a calm he didn't really feel, glancing down at the gun that Denny now rested in his lap with no more than a casual grip. "I'm going to have to arrest you now."

Denny snorted a laugh. "You're not really in a position to do any arresting, now, are you? I couldn't believe it when I heard you'd become a cop," he said, shaking his head slightly. "I had hoped for so much better for you. You were always so smart, I always figured you'd grow up to be a rocket scientist or something."

"How did you even know I was a cop?" Tim said accusingly. "You never read any of Mom's letters, how did you even know my name? How did you know where I live?"

"My lawyer told me that you changed your name a long time ago," Denny told him, "and then I saw you on the news a couple of times. Never told anyone you were my brother, though. Didn't want that reputation, you know." He winked at him.

"What do you want, Denny?" Tim asked. "Why aren't you on a freight ship headed for Dubai or something?"

"Maybe I just wanted to see you," Denny said. "Is that so hard to believe?"

As much as Tim wanted to believe it, he just couldn't. "Yes," he said. "Had you wanted contact you could've had it a long time ago and without breaking out of prison. So what do you want?"

Denny turned very serious. "There is something that I need before I can leave. And I need your help to get it."

Tim shook his head. "I'm not going to help you with anything, unless you're asking for a ride back to prison."

Denny chuckled. "Dry wit! Nice. Did I teach you that?"

"You only had me for 12 years, Denny," Tim said dismissively. "I found other people to mold myself after after that."

"Snarky." Denny stuck his hand into Tim's pockets, one after the other, until he found his wallet. Opening it he helped himself to all the cash Tim carried – a crisp emergency hundred dollar bill, a couple of twenties and a whole lot of pennies. "You don't mind, do you little brother? After all, I've got to eat."

"The prison cafeteria will serve you for free," Tim said gruffly.

"But alas, they so seldom serve pecan pie," Denny grinned. "Do you remember Nana McGee's pecan pie? To die for, for sure."

Tim snorted an involuntary laugh and was suddenly struck with a sense of normalcy. Sitting here, trading jibs, memories and even smiles with Denny. Just like how it had always been between them. As if time had stood still. Except he was handcuffed to the steering wheel and Denny was holding a gun and 22 years and 13 murdered women had come between them.

"What is it you want, Denny?" he asked again, tiredly. "You didn't look me up to reminisce about Nana's pies."

Denny cocked his head and looked at him. "I want to know what happened to my stuff."

"What?" Tim frowned surprised. "What stuff?"

"My stuff, my possessions, my worldly goods, all the things I owned when I went away," Denny reiterated. "What did you do with it?"

"Good will mostly," Tim said, confused. He hadn't expected this. "We had to move out of the house pretty fast and to a pretty small apartment, so we just gave it away."

"But not all of it, right?" Denny said hopefully. "I know you never would have parted with my comic book collection."

Tim bit his lip. He had him there. "Well, sure, I kept the comic books and the baseball cards and some books. Maybe Mom kept photos and your yearbooks and things like that, I don't know, some keepsakes, in case Sarah or I would want it when we grew up. I don't really remember, Denny. It was a long time ago."

"Sure you remember," Denny said. "You always remembered everything."

Tim shook his head. "You can't know that. I was just a kid, you can't think you still know me. Things change. Our lives changed a lot after you went away. _I _changed a lot. But you never thought about that, did you? About what we did afterwards. You haven't even asked about the rest of the family. You haven't asked how Mom is doing, or Dad or Sarah. You haven't asked… You never thought about what effect the things you did would have on the rest of us. You never thought—"

"Some things never change," Denny interrupted him stubbornly. "You do know. Are you sure that only Mom and Sarah have my things? No one else?"

Suddenly Tim saw red. "Don't you dare touch Sarah! Don't even get close to her or I'll shoot you on the spot. Besides, she doesn't have anything. Not a single thing. She doesn't even remember you. So don't go anywhere near her!"

"Relax, Johnny," Denny tried to pacify him. "I just want my things. I wasn't going to hurt her. She's my sister, for god's sake!"

But Tim was still angry and couldn't keep it inside. "Well, Elena was Oliver's sister, so I know you don't spare women just because they're somebody's sister. Do you remember Elena and Oliver? My best friend Oliver? Do you remember the 4th of July party we had in their backyard? Do you rememb—"

"DON'T!" Denny suddenly shouted, his hand gripping Tim's arm hard. "Don't talk about them. She's not yours to talk about."

"She's not yours either!" Tim shouted back, shaking his arm, trying to dislodge his brother. "She never was, but you took her anyway, didn't you? She was a wonderful young woman who you brutally murdered, sending her family into a grief that stripped them of their future, their belief in good and security. You gave them permanent nightmares and a long life forever marred with the knowledge that someone very important to them will never come back to them again. Do you know how many lives you have ruined? Do you even care?"

"You always had such strong convictions, Johnny," Denny said between clenched teeth. "Even when you were little. Right and wrong, black and white. No gray zones in your world."

"This has nothing to do with my world views," Tim hissed angrily. "You raped and murdered 13 women. Some were friends of our family. You killed my best friend's sister! That's wrong to everyone, not just me. Even you must know that that's wrong." 

"Yeah," Denny sighed dejectedly. "Yeah, Johnny, that's what they all tell me. Thing is, it always felt so right."

McGee gulped. "That doesn't matter. It's still wrong. How have you… What have you been thinking about all these years? Do you ever think back on it? Wonder what really happened? Wonder what possessed you? Regret anything?"

Denny sighed again and then he reached out and cupped Tim's neck. He leaned in and rested his forehead against Tim's temple. "Stop caring, Johnny. You're never going to get the answer you want."

"You don't think you owe me an explanation?" Tim asked.

"I don't owe anyone anything," Denny stated.

"But you're my brother," Tim all but pleaded.

Denny turned his head away. "That's just a word. It doesn't mean anything."

"It means something to me," Tim said, twisting in his brother's grip. "In fact, it means a whole lot to me. And it does to you too. Otherwise you wouldn't care whether I cared or not."

Denny pulled back, then he kissed Tim on the forehead and released the hold on his neck. "You shouldn't think so much, Johnny. It'll just give you grief. I doubt we'll ever meet again. I just need to find my stuff, then I'll disappear forever."

Tim panicked and tried to stall. "If you tell me exactly what you are looking for, then maybe I could tell you what happened to it. The comic books are up in my apartment."

"I didn't break out of jail to read 30 year old copies of The Hulk, Johnny," Denny said tiredly. "Your comics are safe from me. Besides, I've already been in your apartment, I didn't find anything."

"Why did you break out then?" Tim asked. "To kill more women? Like that woman in Georgetown?"

Denny looked genuinely puzzled. "What woman in Georgetown?"

Tim frowned. "That wasn't you?"

Denny shook his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Then what have you been doing?" Tim wanted to know. "Where have you been hiding? Where did you get the gun? The clothes? Why are you here? Why did you break out?"

"Why?" Denny asked. "You've never been to prison, have you, Johnny?"

"Not as an inmate, no."

"Then you will never understand." Denny put his hand in Tim's jacket pocket and extracted Tim's phone. "Here." He put it in Tim's hand. "Call someone to come free you. Good bye."

"No, Denny! Wait!" Tim cringed at the sound of his own voice. It wasn't the sturdy voice of a special agent detaining a suspect, it was the voice of a little brother with abandonment issues. "You left me." He hadn't meant to say that, but it had slipped out before he could stop himself.

Denny stopped, halfway out of the car, listening.

"You didn't care. You just left me behind and didn't even look back." His voice waivered. "How could you do that to me?"

Denny didn't even turn around. "I'm sorry this happened to you, Johnny," he said. "You were always the better man. The better brother…" Then he stepped out of the car and shut the door, leaving the key for the cuffs in plain sight on the passenger seat.

McGee turned on the speaker function on his phone and found the Gibbs' number without even looking. He kept his eyes on the rearview mirrors, tracking his brother. But Denny hurriedly walked away without looking back before turning the corner and disappearing from view.

"Yeah," Gibbs answered the phone.

"Boss, I just saw Denny," McGee said. "He's on foot, I think, heading west on Chestnut Street."

"Are you all right?" Gibbs asked.

"I'm fine," McGee assured him. "But I think he's going after my parents next. You have to protect them, Boss!"

"We will," Gibbs assured him. "Where are you?"

"At home," McGee said. "In the parking lot behind my house. But… I need some help. Denny cuffed me to my steering wheel; someone has to come let me loose. But go after Denny first!"

"We can do both," Gibbs said gruffly. "Sit tight." Then he hung up.

xxx

TBC…


	12. Chapter 12

McGee saw a car stop at the curb and Tony getting out. However, the stop was so short and so sudden, that Tony really should've tucked and rolled on the way out. As it was he was probably lucky to exit with all of his limbs intact before Ziva sped off again.

Tony trotted across the parking lot and opened the driver side door. Draping one arm over the open door and the other on the roof of the car, he bent down and grinned at McGee. "Hey, feeling a bit tied up?"

McGee glared at him. "Didn't Abby tell you to be nice to me when you got here?"

Tony nodded. "She did. But 'nice' is such a subjective term. Who's to say I'm not being nice right now?"

McGee sighed. "Just unlock these," he shook his hands and rattled the short chain. "The keys are on the seat." He nodded to his right and Tony took the hint. In a minute he'd slipped into the same seat Denny had recently occupied and was busy unlocking the handcuffs.

"Are you okay?" Tony asked as McGee rubbed his wrists. "Did he hurt you?"

"I'm fine." McGee looked towards the spot where he'd last seen his brother. He had to fight the urge to run after him, but it had been at least 20 minutes since he left. He wouldn't see Denny's back disappear behind the next corner, he wouldn't find him lurking in an alley or on a fire escape close by. He would be long gone by now.

"How many places in the city do you think serve pecan pie?" he asked glumly.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Feeling peckish, are we?"

"Never mind," McGee said, "He said he'd been in my apartment, we have to go check it out."

"Okay," Tony agreed.

A few minutes later they stood in McGee's living room. Tony handed McGee a pair of latex gloves and stood back and watched as McGee did a walkthrough of his apartment to see if anything was missing.

McGee looked around his apartment. He could tell that things had been moved around, but it didn't exactly look burglared. The objects in his bookshelf had all been pushed to one side of the shelf, presumably to look behind them, but nothing had fallen to the floor, and nothing was broken. His dresser drawers were closed, but when he opened them the clothes were in disarray. All in all, Denny hadn't made much of a mess.

"As far as I can tell," McGee told Tony after a first survey, "He's gone through my closets and dressers and the bookshelf and the desk drawers. Nothing else."

"Nothing in the kitchen or bathroom?" Tony asked.

McGee shook his head. "Why should he? He told me that he's looking for something he used to have. If he's looking for something that he thinks I've kept from his childhood, it's not very likely to be a toothbrush or a crockpot, is it? He didn't have any kitchenware since he still lived at home, and even if he did, would he really have broken out of prison for a 20-year-old toaster, do you think?"

Tony shrugged. "Guess not. So what was he looking for?"

McGee shook his head helplessly. "I have no idea. He didn't tell me."

They both turned around as they heard the front door open, Tony's hand hovering over his gun. Ziva and Gibbs came in, and Tony's hand relaxed.

"McGee!" Ziva called. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" She put a hand on his arm, rubbing it.

"I'm fine, Ziva," he answered. "What about Denny? Any trace of him?"

Ziva shook her head, "We did not see him."

Gibbs chimed in. "Fornell is bringing in agents to canvas the neighborhood. They are already at it. If he's still close by, we'll find him."

McGee shook his head. "He won't be. He's too smart. What about the woman in Georgetown, Boss?"

"The doctors say she's going to pull through," Gibbs answered. "We're still processing the scene."

"It wasn't Denny," McGee said. "He said he didn't attack the woman in Georgetown, Boss. And I believed him." Seeing the skeptical looks on his teammates' faces he defended himself. "Not that don't think he's capable. But he looked genuinely surprised when I mentioned it."

"Well, maybe it wasn't him. A copycat, maybe?" Tony theorized. "Has there ever been one before?"

"Only one that I've heard of, but he botched up," McGee said, thinking back. "The victim survived and he ended up in jail. That was… um… 14 or 15 years ago."

"Maybe it was just someone who wanted her dead and decided to take advantage of the fact that there is a high profile serial killer on the loose," Ziva said. "It has happened before."

"We'll process the evidence," Gibbs said. "We'll know soon enough. McGee," he crooked his finger and beckoned him closer. "Talk to me about your brother. What did he want? What did you find out?"

McGee sunk down on a chair, resting his elbows on his knees, leaning slightly forward, seemingly deflating. Ziva put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "He said that he was looking for something. Something he used to have."

"What?" Gibbs asked.

McGee shrugged. "I have no idea. We never got that far."

"Well," Gibbs said. "Where is his stuff?"

McGee shrugged again. "I have some, but apparently not the right things. He said he'd gone through my place without finding it, whatever it is. Mom probably has some, but she would have to hide them from Dad. In the attic maybe. We'll have to ask her. Other than that, we gave everything away or threw it away when we moved." He looked up at Gibbs with despair. "Boss, what about Mom and Dad? Did you…?"

"The agents covering your parents' house are preparing to get them into a car as we speak," Gibbs said. "Vance has arranged for a safe house here in D.C."

McGee looked surprised at him. "Oh, a safe house?" He felt so slow. He hadn't even thought of that. "That's good."

"He made contact with you, McGee," Gibbs said firmly. "That's all I needed to know. Ziva and Tony will go find Sarah. We'll have you together and safe in no time."

McGee blinked. "But I told him that Sarah doesn't have any of his stuff."

"And what if he didn't believe you?" Gibbs looked seriously at him. 

McGee looked shell-shocked. "Of course. Oh my god, I can't believe I didn't think of that. I'll— I'll go get Sarah now," he said, standing up and walking towards the door. On the inside he was cursing at himself. He was still thinking too much like a brother and not enough as an agent. He couldn't trust a thing Denny had told him! Maybe his team had been right to distrust him all along.

"No," Gibbs said, halting him with a hand around his arm. "Tony and Ziva will do it. You and I are going directly to the safe house."

"No!" McGee exclaimed. "You can't put me in the safe house, Boss. You can't take me off the investigation. I have to stay with you."

"Oh, you will," Gibbs said. "I'm not letting you out of my sight. Trust me, you will not be alone again. But we are going to the safe house to set up. I want to be there to greet your parents. We're leaving in two minutes, I just have to make a call first."

McGee rubbed a hand over his face, feeling tired. "Yeah, okay," he relented. Maybe he could use a little break and let his boss be boss for a little while. Then he suddenly remembered something. "Tony," he said. "Don't tell Sarah why you're picking her up. Just say that I'll explain when she gets there."

Tony looked puzzled. "Why?"

McGee looked uncomfortable. "She doesn't know anything. We never told her about Denny, about what he did, or what happened to him. I don't think she even remembers him. Remember, she was only four years old, and very sick. Her memories from that time are all of the disease. We've… we've been protecting her, we wanted her to have a normal life. So we just… we… we told her he had died."

"You told a sick four-year-old that her brother was dead?" Ziva asked, apparently appalled.

McGee looked down at the floor, and for a moment Ziva thought she saw a look of shame cross over his face. "It was dad's idea." _Dad's decision, really._ "So that if we accidently mentioned Denny around new people, we wouldn't have to explain where he was and things like that. Mom agreed, because then he would allow her to keep her photo albums intact. After that, I didn't have much choice, I had to agree too. So when Sarah started asking questions we told her he had been in an accident and that she hadn't been to the funeral because she had been too sick to leave the hospital. It was to protect her."

"So, what are you going to tell her now?" Ziva asked.

McGee shrugged dejectedly. "I have no idea."

xxx

McGee was pacing the floor of the safe house. He felt conflicted. He wanted his family to be safe, that was a given, but he wasn't looking forward to seeing any of them. Which was weird, because this was a family matter, so who else should he want to turn to? But Denny was such a sore subject in his family. His father would be angry and annoyed. His mother would be sad but hopeful. And he didn't look forward to telling Sarah the truth. She would be pissed beyond belief.

McGee's phone rang. "Tony? Where are you?" he answered.

"Now, don't freak out on me, McGirlish Scream," Tony said. "Sarah isn't at her apartment. Her roommate says she's on a date, but the good news is that she knows where they went. We're heading for the restaurant now. Don't worry."

McGee pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, okay. Just… Just as fast as you can, okay? We have no idea where Denny is right now."

"Don't worry. I'm handing Ziva the car keys as we speak."

McGee hung up, but kept on rubbing his eyes. It was late at night, he was already exhausted and he knew that this day was far from over.

Gibbs sat on the couch, nursing a coffee, watching his caged tiger work himself into a frenzy. He didn't try to stop him, though. He figured it would be a lost cause to even try. After the talk he had had with Harlan he was a bit apprehensive about meeting with the older generation McGee himself. Stressful times could make you do all sorts of stupid stuff, but neglecting your child was never okay in Gibbs' book. But a lot of time had gone by. Had they owned up to their mistakes? Had they made it right by Tim? Judging by the way Tim was behaving, there was obviously still tension between them, but did it permeate through every aspect of their relationship or was it just about Denny?

McGee turned to him. "What about my parents? Shouldn't they be here soon?"

"They're coming, McGee," Gibbs answered calmly. "I called the agents sitting with them from your apartment and asked them to have your parents gather together Denny's possessions before they left. If what he wants is there, we'll get to it before him."

McGee opened his mouth to protest, Gibbs could see the underlying panic and stopped him. "Denny can't fly. It would've taken him time to get from your place to your parents' house. They were told to clear out with plenty of time to make sure they won't be there if he shows up."

McGee closed his mouth again and nodded. "Thank you."

"They'll be taking his things to Abby," Gibbs said. "You can help her go through them in the morning."

"I could—" McGee said immediately, but Gibbs held up a hand and stopped him.

"No. You're needed here tonight. Why don't you go put the groceries away?"

McGee looked surprised, but went into the kitchen area and started unloading the groceries they had stopped to get on the way, realizing that his boss was trying to distract him.

"And put on a fresh pot of coffee," Gibbs called from the living room. "Your parents will be here soon."

xxx

Tony called 20 minutes later to let them know that they were on their way. "We've got her in the car now. But I should warn you, Probie, she's not happy with you." He looked in the rearview mirror at the surly young woman who sat hunched down in her seat with her arms crossed defiantly across her chest.

McGee sounded exhausted when he answered. "When is she ever?"

He had only just hung up when his parents arrived. Admiral McGee preceded his security detail into the house, striding purposefully and angrily through the door and didn't stop until he was in his son's face. "Tim! What is the meaning of this?"

Tim, to the surprise of Gibbs, didn't back away. "It's a safe house, Dad," he said, calmly but steely. "We have to keep you protected."

"From what?" the admiral questioned. "Dennis? I'm not scared of him."

"It's not just about you," McGee answered. "We know that Denny's looking for some possession from his past. There are only a few places where those could logically be stored, and your place is the most natural place to look. We have highly trained agents surveilling your place, and if Denny does show up, we don't want you in the line of fire."

"We could've gotten a hotel room, then," his father seethed. "There's no reason for you to treat your parents like prisoners, locking us up in here. I can't stay here, out of touch without any communications. I have a job to do, Tim. A really important one."

"Well, so do I, Dad," Tim said coldly. "And for once, my job trumps your job. I can have my director call SECNAV and make it an order, if that makes you more comfortable, but you _will_ stay here until _I_ say it's okay to leave. The world can get by without you for a couple of days."

"What am I supposed to tell people?" the admiral demanded.

Tim was seething with barely restrained anger. Why couldn't his dad just listen to him? "Gee, Dad, I don't know. Either you call your aide and tell him to spread the word that you are in protective custody because your serial killer son just escaped from prison, or you tell him you have the stomach flu. Your choice, Dad. Now, as soon as Sarah gets here—"

"Sarah?" the Admiral exploded. "No! You are not involving your sister in this folly. I absolutely forbid it."

"I'm not involving her, Denny is," Tim said forcefully. "And I'm not exposing her to danger just so you can keep protecting your secrets. It was your decision to lie to her, Dad. Now you have to live with the consequences."

"Stop it, right now." Alice McGee stepped between the combatants. "This is a time to stay together, as a family. A hard concept for some of you to grasp, I know," she looked sourly at her husband, "But you will do it anyway. John, we're going to have to trust Tim on this. This is his job. This is what he is good at. He just wants to keep us safe." She stared her husband down, waiting for him to yield.

Reluctantly the admiral took a step back. "I don't like this."

"We know you don't, dear," Alice said, patting him on the chest before turning to Tim. "Hello, sweetheart," she said, holding out her arms.

"Hi Mom," he said, hugging her. "How are you?"

"I've been better," his mother answered truthfully. "But then again, I've been much worse too. At least we all have our health this time."

Admiral McGee grumbled something under his breath and his wife looked angrily at him. She opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the arrival of her daughter.

They heard Sarah long before they saw her. First the door slammed, then they heard her yell. "Timothy McGee! You have better be ready with the best excuse of your life! I was on date and you had me picked up by cops? Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was? You had better be at death's door to warrant a stunt like this." She stormed into the living room, stomping as much as her fancy high heels would allow her and suddenly stopped cold. "Mom? Dad?" she said uncertainly. "What's going on?"

"Calm down, honey," Alice said, hurrying up to her daughter, enveloping her in a hug. "Tim's boss has decided that we should stay in a safe house for a little while, but it's only a precaution."

"Why? What happened?" Sarah looked at her brother, narrowing her eyes sourly. "What did you do?"

Tim frowned. "I didn't do anything!" he protested.

"Then why is NCIS locking up our family?"

Tim sighed. His sister and his father shared a lot of not so flattering attributes, such as their impatience and quick temper. "Have you been watching the news lately?" he asked.

"Not really," Sarah shrugged. "Why?"

Tim looked at his parents. Just as he had predicted, she hadn't made the connection. She probably didn't even remember that she had once been called Langston. He waited a few moments to see if either of his parents would pick up the thread, but they seemed at loss for words, so finally it was he who answered. "Do you remember Dennis? Our brother?"

"Yeah," Sarah said uncertainly. "A little. So…?"

"Well, sweetie," Alice said. "There's a chance that he might be trying to find us, and Tim just wants to keep us safe."

Sarah looked even more confused and Tim didn't blame her. "Trying to find us…? What— How's that even possible? He's dead!"

Tim cast an accusatory look at his parents. "No, Denny isn't dead," he said. "Dad lied to you. We lied to you."

"He's not— What? Why?!" Sarah looked utterly bewildered and hurt. "What happened to him?"

"Sweetheart," Alice started. "What do you remember?"

Sarah frowned. "I remember being in the hospital and when I came home Denny wasn't there and you were crying all the time and Dad was always angry and Tim said that Denny was gone and would never come home again. And then we moved and everyone stopped talking about him. Now, answer me. What happened to Dennis?"

"He's a serial killer and rapist." McGee said matter-of-factly. "He's been in prison for 22 years, until early yesterday morning, when he escaped."

"Tim…" Alice said disapprovingly.

"It's what he is, Mom, and you know it."

"Yes, but you don't have to say it like that," Alice said. "He's still your brother."

Sarah stood gaping at them, her face pale as a sheet. The Admiral put his arm around her shoulders. "Don't worry about it, peanut. It's better that you didn't know. It gave you a better childhood. Come, sit down. You must have a ton of question."

In the background, McGee could hear Gibbs dismissing Tony and Ziva, probably to Tony's big disappointment. He loved a good drama.

xxx

TBC…


	13. Chapter 13

Regaling his sister their family history was one of the hardest things Tim had ever done. And having an honest conversation with his parents about Denny was just outright weird. They hadn't talked about it much after they moved from California. It had been an unspoken agreement to put their old life behind them and look to the future and whenever Tim had wanted to talk about it, he felt as if he was disobeying.

"And now he's escaped?" Sarah asked at length.

Tim sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."

"And you think he's going to come looking for us?" she questioned. "Why? Shouldn't he be halfway to Mexico or Canada by now?"

Tim shook his head. "I thought so first, too. But then I saw him a few hours ago. He looked me up and told me that he needed something he used to have and wanted to know what we did with his things."

Alice gasped and leaned forward, grasping Tim's arm firmly. "What? Are you saying that you've actually talked to him? You've actually seen him? How is he? What does he look like? Did he look healthy? Did he ask for us? What did he say?"

The Admiral looked equally flabbergasted. "You saw him? You actually talked to him? Then why isn't he in custody? How could you let him go?"

"I didn't let him do anything," Tim defended himself, feeling ambushed. "Yes, I saw him tonight. He found me, broke into my car and lay in wait in the backseat. He—" he stopped himself.

"Go on," the Admiral said grimly.

McGee looked directly at his father. "He held a gun to my head, Dad. I don't think he actually wanted to hurt me, but— He handcuffed me to the steering wheel. That's why I couldn't arrest him. I'm sorry, I wanted to, but…"

His father got up from the armchair he was sitting in, and went to stand by a window with his back to his family. "It's okay," he said at length, sighing. "I'm glad you're safe."

Alice came up to Tim and gently cupped his face between her hands. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," she said. "I shouldn't have jumped at you like that. I was just curious; you know I haven't seen Denny in 22 years and I can't help missing him. He's still my son. But you are my first priority. I won't let him hurt you."

Tim almost laughed and took her hands off his face. "Mom, I'm the one protecting you now, not the other way around. I'm gonna keep going after him while you stay here, safe. I'm grown up now, and trained for this. And it's okay that you're curious about him. He's your son. I have to admit that my heart skipped a beat too at the thought of seeing him again, even under the circumstances. And he didn't hurt me; he just didn't want me to arrest him."

"Agent Gibbs," the admiral said, turning to Gibbs who had been staying in the background, letting Tim handle his family in the way he thought best. "What is being done about finding Denny?"

Gibbs looked at Tim before answering. "The area around McGee's apartment is being gone through with a fine tooth comb. The FBI have put a lot of agents on the streets, knocking on doors and showing Denny's photo around. Your house is also under surveillance, as well as all the main roads between yours and McGee's house. Trust me, the FBI have dedicated a very large workforce to this."

"So why do we have to stay here?" the Admiral asked.

"Dad!" Tim said angrily, but was shushed by an angry wave from his father, who still kept his eyes on Gibbs.

"As your son explained," Gibbs said, his eyes narrowed in irritation, "We want you out of the line of fire. As Denny has made contact with his brother, it only stands to reason he won't hesitate to look for the rest of his family too. He's looking for something, and he thinks one of you knows where it is."

"Then would it not be better to let him find us?" the Admiral said. "It could get this thing over much quicker. I'll go back home, wait for him and take him out when he shows up."

"We're not in the habit of putting people we're protecting in unnecessary danger, Admiral," Gibbs said. "We have agents at your house. If he shows up, they will deal with him."

"I'm not in the habit of hiding either," the Admiral growled. "Not from some coward who might be looking to hurt my family! I'm an admiral in the United States Navy for god's sake. You don't get to that rank by cowering in a corner."

"No, Dad," Tim said brutally. "You're wrong. You're the civilian in this situation, and we are the authority. This is our case, our responsibility. You will do what we say."

"Enough!" Again, it was Alice McGee who stepped between her husband and son, a role she was obviously used to playing. "The situation is what it is. We're just going to have to deal with it as best as we can. And that means that the two of you will have listen to each other!" She sighed, exasperated. "It's getting late and Sarah obviously missed dinner. Tim, why don't you two fix us something to eat before we go to bed."

Breaking the staring match with his father, Tim nodded. "You're right, Mom. Come on, Sarah."

xxx

Gibbs sat on the couch with Alice McGee, watching her watching her family. Tim and Sarah were in the kitchen, making coffee and tea and preparing sandwiches. Admiral McGee stood next to the couch, looking as if he would be pacing, had it not been for his long military discipline.

"You raised a fine young man there, Admiral," Gibbs told him.

The admiral looked at him and nodded a thanks, but Alice snorted. Gibbs looked at her.

"Timothy is a great man, and a wonderful son," Alice said, "but I don't think John can take much credit for that."

"Alice," Admiral McGee said with a reprimanding tone.

"Shush, John," Alice said sternly. "I have told you all of this before, you know how I feel about it. You are your father's son, and stubborn as a mule. I know I have responsibility in this too, but I do wish you could finally learn to listen to me." She turned to Gibbs. "Tim was left on his own much too much back then. He practically had to raise himself. When I look back on that time, the thing that hits me hardest is not Denny or what he did, but guilt for Tim. He was left to fend for himself in some horrible situations, much too big for a 12-year-old boy to handle. And yet… he did. He took care of everything, but at much too high a price. Those were his formative years and his sister was dying, his brother was a serial killer and his parents were too busy in their grief and worry to see him properly. He needed his family something fierce and we weren't there for him. Oh, I've tried to make it up to Tim since, but I don't know if it's been enough. Too often I see that little boy in him, scared he's letting us down somehow, scared that he's not a good enough son when in fact he's twice the son any parent could ever hope to have." She glared at her husband before focusing on Gibbs again. "You know the labels we put on children? His father's son, daddy's little princess, all of that?"

Gibbs nodded.

"Well, Sarah was always a daddy's girl, no doubt about that, and Denny was always much closer to me when he was little. John was never that good at communicating with either of his sons, I always had to mediate between them."

"Alice, please," the Admiral said with a pained expression.

His wife ignored him. "Tim, however, lived for his siblings. Denny was his hero, and Sarah's always been the apple of his eye. There's nothing he wouldn't do for her, he lets her get away with anything – except perhaps murder."

Gibbs nodded again. "I know." He didn't know how much Alice – or the admiral for that matter - had been told about the time Sarah had for a short while been a suspect in one of their murder cases, but because of that case he had seen firsthand the devotion and love McGee had for his sister.

"How he ever got over losing his brother the way he did, I'll never know," Alice continued. "But he carries it with him wherever he goes. He's only in law enforcement because of Denny, because of some misguided notion that he owes the world some kind of blood debt because of what his brother did. Oh, don't get me wrong," she said as he saw the look on Gibbs' face. "I know he loves his job and NCIS. There's nowhere else he'd rather be. But the original reason why he went for law enforcement at all instead of ending up in Silicon Valley or one of the multi-billion dollar corporations that headhunted him when he was at MIT is because of Denny. Instead of working on computers all day and just have fun he needs to serve, he needs to help people. And that's because of Denny and Agent Harlan. Have you heard about Agent Harlan?"

Gibbs nodded. "I've spoken to him."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Alice looked pleased. "Harlan really took Tim under his wings when we didn't have time to care for him. I am forever grateful to that man for how he treated my son during those months. He kept in touch with the entire family during all the months leading up to the trial and he always had time for Tim when he had questions or just needed someone to talk to. He came and visited him at the hospital when he'd been beaten up at school. Sat with him in court the day Tim had to testify. When we were shunned by the entire community, he was one of the few who still talked to us like we were a normal family, normal people. He never put any blame on any of us, instead he raved about Tim's courage to anyone who'd listen. We owe him a debt that can never be repaid." She looked at Gibbs, a little mischievously. "The way Tim talks about you sometimes, you remind me of Agent Harlan. It's no wonder Tim feels so at home on you team."

Alice looked at her children again, smiling as she watched them bicker amicably over sandwich toppings. "As hard as it might be to believe, even serial killers have mothers… When you've raised a child like Denny it's easy to blame yourself. What did we do wrong? Should we have known? How could it have ended up the way it did? But then I look at Tim and Sarah… Just look at them Agent Gibbs. Good, strong, conscientious adults. Always ready to lend a hand, always caring about others. What more could you want? Sure, Sarah's too hot-tempered for her own good at times and Tim needs to practice standing up for himself more, but they were raised with the same values, under the same rules and with the same love – though it didn't always show – " Alice glared at her husband again, " – as Denny was. I felt the same way the first time I held Denny that I felt the first time I held Tim or Sarah. I don't know what went wrong with Denny, or how he could commit such horrible acts, that's for smarter people than me to figure out. But I do know that it wasn't his family's fault. And that's something. Without that knowledge, I don't think our family could've survived."

"Not our fault?" the Admiral said. "You have never stopped reprimanding me over the way I raised our children."

"I never blamed you for what Denny did," Alice snapped at him. "I only ever wanted you to see your sons for who they really were, and not the officers-in-making that you were trying to turn them into. You don't leave a 12-year-old to fend for himself against a hoard of angry villagers because it builds character!"

"Mom!" They all turned to see Tim standing close to them, two coffee mugs in his hands. "Calm down. I'm not 12 anymore." He handed one coffee mug to his boss and the other to his father, then he put his hands gently on his mother's upper arms. "It's time you made peace with what happened. I grew up just fine and I don't need you to champion me anymore." He kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you for looking out for me, but I've grown up. And I'm just fine."

Alice put her hand on Tim's face, slowly stroking his cheek. "I know you are, sweetheart. But I'm your mother. How can I not be ashamed about the fact that you were going through hell and we didn't see you?"

She turned back to Gibbs, continuing her confession. "All our energy went into getting Denny a lawyer and getting through all the preliminaries and then the actual trial of course. We had to get a bank loan to afford it and Sarah's hospital bills were skyrocketing, even with the insurance. So we had financial difficulties on top of everything else. Also, we needed to process the court to be allowed to take Denny to the hospital to do the bone marrow transplant. Sarah was getting sicker and sicker and time was running out. We finally got Denny out on a high-security furlough to go through with it, but it was in the nick of time. So while John was flying all over town taking care of all the practical things surrounding Denny's situation I was stuck at the hospital, taking care of Sarah. Tim fell through the cracks. We made sure there was always food in the house and we showered him in pizza money. One of us always tried spent the night at home, but sometimes it was after midnight before one of us made it home. And Tim… he never said anything about it, he never asked for anything. He voluntarily took the backseat because he genuinely believed everyone else were more important than him. It was our job to make sure he knew he was every bit as important to us as his siblings, and we failed spectacularly. We've apologized time and time again, and he's always said that it didn't matter and that it didn't hurt him in the long run, but he was 12 years old and going through the worst time of his life, a situation way above a 12-year-old's understanding. He deserved the full attention of his parents!"

"Mom! That's enough," Tim said, stopping her. "It's ancient history. I know that Denny's escape has opened up many wounds for all of us, but that doesn't mean that we have to fall back into the same patterns as before. You're not neglecting me now, are you? The only things I need from you right now, are exactly what I'm getting. Your love and support. That's all."

"And you will always have that, dear," Alice said, kissing her son's cheek.

Tim looked at Gibbs. As usual his face was unreadable. Suddenly he realized that he didn't mind that Gibbs knew about this part of his life. Gibbs wouldn't waste time feeling sorry for him as so many others would and he wouldn't hold it against him. He wasn't the type. He would only use the information to help Tim get stronger, to make him better at his job. The information would be safe with him.

As if he could read minds, Gibbs looked back at him and nodded.

xxx

"I'm leaving him," Alice said quietly. It was after midnight. Sarah had gone to bed, still furious with all of them. The Admiral was at the kitchen table, working on his laptop. Tim and his mother sat close together on the couch, Alice clutching the cup of tea Tim had just brought her. Gibbs had pulled back to the other side of the room and sat leafing through a magazine, giving them a sense of privacy.

"Mom…" Tim started.

His mother held up a hand. "I know. I've said it before, but this time I really mean it. As soon as this is over I'm going to go through with it. I'm keeping the house. He owes me that, at the very least. He's not there often enough to call it his home, anyway. I've been alone for most of our marriage, all that's missing is making it official. So it's not going to be much different from today, except I'll no longer have a duty to sit and wait for his phone calls – or worse, his aide's calls – to tell me he won't be home tonight either. I still love him, and I know he still loves me, in his own way, but I can't live his life anymore. I can't live for the Navy. I still have a few good years in me. I want to live them my way. You can understand that, can't you, sweetheart?"

"Of course, Mom," Tim nodded. "If this is what you want, then I'm behind you. You know that." He was actually pleased. No kid ever wanted his parents to get divorced, but he had seen his mother take the backseat to his father's career for so many years now. It was time for her to put herself first.

"Come on, bedtime."

McGee looked up and saw Gibbs standing in front of the couch.

"Boss?"

"Peterson and Row are staking out the front, Jordan and Thompson are in the back and you and I have to be back at the office in less than seven hours. And you are sitting on my bed."

"He's right, honey," Alice said. "It's late and it's been a long day. I'm heading for bed myself."

"Oh. Okay. Good night, mom." He kissed her on the cheek. "Night, Boss. Good night, Dad," he called and stood still for a moment, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement. When none came he sighed and headed for the bathroom.

After a short pit stop he crept quietly into the bedroom. The safe house had two bedrooms; one with a king sized bed for the protectee – in this case his parents – and a smaller one with two twin beds for the agents on duty, which Tim would be sharing with Sarah, leaving Gibbs with the couch.

Sarah was asleep in the left bed, lying on her stomach with her head turned towards the wall. McGee moved as quietly as he could as he undressed down to his boxers and t-shirt and crawled under the sheets.

"I've been trying to remember him."

Sarah's semi-whisper sounded loud in the quiet room. It surprised Tim. He had been sure she was asleep.

"What?" he asked, sitting up again.

"I said, I've been trying to remember him," Sarah said, turning over to face him. "But I can't. Not very much, anyway. Just bits and pieces."

"You were only four," Tim comforted her. "And you were very sick. It's only natural that the memories you have of that time would be of hospitals and medicines and such."

"But still," Sarah sounded irritated. "I should remember him more. And the things I do remember… I'm not even sure if they are my memories or things people have told me. But you didn't really talk a lot about Denny, when we were growing up, did you?"

"Dad didn't want us to. He was quite adamant about it."

"But Dad was away a lot," Sarah pointed out. "So what stopped you?"

Tim shrugged. "The lie was already in place. No one else could know about it. And we needed some kind of closure. To keep dragging it up wouldn't have been beneficial to us either, in the long run."

"I still can't believe you've been lying to me my entire life." She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. "The people I trust the most in the world."

"I was always uncomfortable with that," Tim said apologetically. "But I'd be damned if I could figure out a way to tell you. How can you possibly tell a sick four-year-old that her beloved brother is going to prison for life for raping and murdering 13 women? You wouldn't have been able to understand any of it. And then as the years went by… how do you broach that subject?"

"But telling a sick four-year-old that her beloved brother had died? That's brutal, Tim."

"I know."

Sarah was quiet for a while, but she didn't turn around or close her eyes, so Tim waited patiently.

"What I do remember… what I _think_ I remember is him reading to me and doing funny voices. Was that real?"

"Yeah," Tim nodded. "He was good at funny voices. They say that sociopaths and psychopaths can't feel real emotions, that they can't feel empathy, that they can't feel love. But Denny loved us. I know he did. I mean, I'm not very sure about what was going on with him the last year or so, but before that. When we were little, Denny loved us. Remember, he saved your life."

He reached out his hand and after a moment's hesitation Sarah reached out too and took it. Tim squeezed it. "He adored you, just as much as I did. That part we never lied about. And this way… Well, at least the few sketchy memories you grew up with are of a normal brother. All my good memories were swept away when I watched him kill that woman. The look on his face…" He shuddered. "He is a monster. That's why I will never let him get within a mile of you. Whoever he may have been at home does not make up for what he did. He's dangerous, Sarah. Really dangerous."

This time it was Sarah who squeezed his hand.

xxx

TBC…


	14. Chapter 14

In the morning, the team assembled in Abby's lab. She has Denny's belongings from his parents' house laid out on the worktable. It wasn't all that much. Tim was sure there were more in their attic, things like Denny's first pair of shoes and his baby toys and other nostalgic things their mother had collected, but the things his mother had been asked to bring were the things that Denny had been using at the time of the murders.

"Let me tell you," Tony said, surveying the loot. "I don't see anything here worth breaking out of prison for."

Tim had to agree. School books, yearbooks, a baseball cap and glove, pop magazines, a rolled up poster, a Frisbee with dogteeth marks on it… There was nothing here that didn't come a dime a dozen in any normal teenager's room. "I don't get it, either," he confessed. "It must be something else. Something we didn't keep. Maybe we didn't realize it was important."

"So what happened to his things?" Ziva asked.

McGee shrugged. "It ended up all over the place. First the police and NIS went through all of it, collecting everything that might relate to the case. The rest we packed up when we had to move. It was pretty quick… Dad didn't want to keep anything that had been Denny's, and Mom was about to agree when my grandmother Penny stepped in, said that we had to keep some mementoes, that we would regret it if we didn't. So Mom, Penny and I packed up his room. Most of it went to charity or were thrown out, we were moving to a much smaller place, so we couldn't keep all that much."

"Yes, but what did you keep?" Ziva asked.

"I don't remember," McGee said with a pained expression and gestured at the table. "Things like these I guess. It was a long time ago and I had other things on my mind. I know that I kept his comic books, his baseball cards and a couple of his books. Mom mostly kept photos and things like these."

"He didn't come back for some baseball cards or a high school edition of Huckleberry Finn," Gibbs said. "It has to be something really important. Think, McGee. Think!"

"Something related to the murders, perhaps?" Abby suggested.

"But the police ransacked our house to find anything that might be considered evidence," McGee protested.

"Something he kept hidden, then?" Tony suggested. "Something the police didn't find."

"Like what?" McGee asked. "If we had found anything when we were packing up, we would've handed it over."

"We know Denny had access to all of the case files, so he would know every scrap of evidence that was collected," Ziva said. "So we know it's not something that the police found. It has to be something that he believes was so important to you that you would keep it."

"Look at the things that were collected as evidence," Gibbs said. "And look at the things you and your mother has. What is missing? What isn't mentioned anywhere?"

McGee went to pull up the appropriate file on Abby's computer screen, so everyone could read it, but as he was scrolling through the file directory, his eye caught another document and he froze, a long forgotten memory begging for his attention. At first he couldn't figure out why the testimony of the forensic psychiatrist would evoke such a reaction so he sat staring blankly ahead of him as he waited for his brain to make the proper connection. The others watched him quietly until he whispered, "Trophies…"

"What?" Abby asked.

"Trophies," McGee said a little louder, turning around excitedly. "The psychiatrist said that it was strange that Denny didn't keep trophies or souvenirs of the murders, it didn't fit with the profile of a serial killer. Nothing was ever found and Denny never said a word about it. But…" he hesitated. "Oliver said – before we found out it was Denny, while he was still talking to me – he claimed that one of Elena's stuffed animals had disappeared and he swore that it had disappeared the night she was murdered. But none of the other families reported anything missing."

"He could have taken small things that no one would notice was missing," Ziva said.

"But where would he have kept them?" McGee mused.

"He would've wanted to keep them very hidden," Tony said. "And considering that he's been asking for his stuff he had to have kept them in his room, not buried in the garden. A loose floorboard, a ventilation shaft, something like that?"

"Then he would be heading for the old house," McGee protested. "Not trying to find his old belongings. We never searched under the floorboards when we moved."

"Then think, McGee," Gibbs said sternly. "Think! He came to _you_! He thinks you're the one with the answer, so you have to know it. Somewhere in that noggin of your," he tapped McGee on the side of the head with his knuckles, "is the answer. Concentrate."

McGee looked crestfallen. "I can't remember."

"Yes, you can," Gibbs said. "Take a walk, clear you head and really think about it. You know this!"

"Okay." McGee reached for his jacket and headed for the elevator. Gibbs nodded to Tony to go with him, but McGee shook his head.

"I won't go outside the security perimeters, I promise."

Tony sat back behind his desk again.

xxx

McGee sat on a cold park bench within sight of the main entrance of their building, a now cold cup of coffee clasped between his hands, the slowly setting sun shining sporadically at him through red and orange maple leaves. In his mind's eye he was back in his childhood home, moving between the ghostly wisps of memories. Some parts stood out so clearly, others were only shadows in the corners. His brother's room. He'd spent so much time in there until Denny became a surly teenager and started shutting and locking the door behind him.

McGee closed his eyes and bent his head towards the ground. _He was standing in the middle of his brother's room, turning slowly, seeing the familiar yet distant walls and things. The baseball posters and the John Wayne poster Denny kept on the wall just to annoy his little brother. Denny's white cowboy hat hanging above it. __An unmade bed with rumpled striped sheets, crumpled clothes sticking out from under the bed. __A desk, a normal IKEA desk without any chance of any secret compartments. School books and note books. A USN coffee mug with _

_pens and pencils in it. A cactus in the window, next to a lava lamp. Cowboy figurines on the windowsill. __A baseball bat leaning against the desk, a catcher's glove and three balls on the floor next to it. __A red armchair hidden under a mound of clothes. __A bookshelf with a row of books. No chance of any of them being hollowed out to use for a hiding spot, Tim knew, he had borrowed and read all of them. Two signed baseballs in protective casings. A cute little porcelain dog – not Denny's style at all, it had been a birthday present from Sarah. Sport trophies, team photographs, a photo of Denny, Tim and Sarah. The binders with the baseball cards. And on the bottom shelf…_

McGee sat up abruptly, cold coffee spilling over his fingers. He couldn't believe he had forgotten! He tossed the coffee cup in a close by thrash bin and fished out his cell phone, waiting impatiently for the recipient to pick up.

"Tony! Meet me at the car. I know what he wants and where it is."

xxx

McGee fished his lock picking kit out of his pocket even while they were walking up the garden path.

Tony protested. "It's your grandmother's house. You could at least try knocking before you start picking her lock."

"She won't mind," Tim assured him as he hunched over and peered at the lock in the dim porch light.

"Really?" Tony said. "It seems so sacrilegious, somehow, breaking into a grandmother's house."

"Trust me, Tony, if you'd ever met my grandmother, you would understand. If I tell her I picked her lock she will thrilled. And then she will not rest until I have taught her how to do it too. Besides, she's not home."

"Oh, where is she?" Tony asked, looking around, keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings.

"Kathmandu."

Tony blinked in surprise. "Kathmandu?"

"Yes."

"I just can't picture a grandmother in Kathmandu."

"Well, Penny isn't your typical grandmother." McGee said as his administrations were successful and he opened the door.

"Did you call her?" Tony said. "Can she tell us where she's keeping this thing?"

"No need," McGee said, shutting the door behind them. "I already know."

"So what is this thing again?" Tony asked as he flipped the light switch in the foyer.

"It was a Christmas gift from Penny and grandpa John. He was stationed abroad, somewhere in Asia, but Penny flew back to spend Christmas with us. I was maybe eight, so Denny would've been around fourteen. I don't even remember what I got, but Denny got a box. It was built like a solid log cabin, but by manipulating the logs in a rather complicated manner, a lock would open and you could lift up the roof and hide things in it. It was a puzzle, a kid's game. Denny gave it a try or two, but he lost interest pretty quickly when he didn't get it right."

"But you didn't," Tony guessed.

"No, I loved it," McGee confirmed. "Took me about two weeks to figure it out. I showed it to Denny and he said 'cool' and then it ended up on his bookshelf. Then, a couple of years later, just about when the murders started, Denny came and asked me to teach him how to open the box, so I did. I didn't think twice about it, and I didn't think about it when everything was discovered."

"So how did it end up with your grandmother?" Tony asked as McGee led the way through the house.

"She was helping me and Mom pack up the house. We were getting rid of so much. She asked if I wanted it, she remembered how much I loved it when Denny first got it, but I didn't, not then. Too many memories. So she said she'd keep it for me, in case I changed my mind."

"And you know where it is?"

McGee nodded. "She's got a trunk in one of the spare bedrooms with keepsakes. It'll be there if she still has it. And I very much doubt that she would've gotten rid of it."

"All right," Tony said, looking around him. "Lead the way."

Quite at home, McGee cut through the kitchen and guided them up the backstairs. Penny's house was large, much larger than she really needed – which she would often say– but she kept it anyway, because of the garden. The guest bedroom he was heading for, which he usually thought of as Sarah's room as it were where she always had stayed when they stayed over, was just at the top of the backstairs.

Tony looked into the gloom down the hall. "What's down there?"

"More bedrooms mostly," McGee said as he opened the door to Sarah's room and turned on the lights. He knew his own guest bedroom was there, ready and waiting for him, even though he hadn't spent the night since his college days. Denny's room had been turned into craft room in the middle of the '90s, when Penny had briefly picked up the hobby of macramé.

Sarah's room was uncluttered and well ordered, as it wasn't in regular use, but the cleaning lady obviously still went over it with a toothbrush as there wasn't a speck of dust in there. His grandfather had expected a militaristically disciplined home, but Penny had only really relented as far as the cleaning aspect.

The chest, which was essentially Penny's hope chest, stood under the window. Tim rounded the big, four-poster bed and knelt in front of it. Tony lagged behind, still peering out into the corridor.

"It will be in here," McGee said confidently to him as he opened the chest and reverently started emptying it of his grandmother's treasures. Soon he had a little mound next to him, made up of children's drawings, ballet slippers, dried flowers with faded ribbons, the family christening gown, baby shoes, a bridal veil, travel memories, postcards, a wind-up music box which started playing slowly and out of tune when he moved it and other knickknacks. He saw the puzzle box he was looking for sitting at the bottom of the chest, and for a moment he smiled in triumph at being right, before he remembered why he was looking for it in the first place.

"It's here," he said before picking it up. It wasn't very big, perhaps 12 by 8 inches, but surprisingly heavy. He stood up and turned around… and immediately dropped the box on the floor and kicked it behind him, simultaneously drawing his gun and aiming it at his brother.

Denny was standing just inside the door with his arm wrapped in a tight chokehold around Tony's neck and a gun pressed into his cheek.

xxx

TBC…


	15. Chapter 15

"Let him go, Denny," Tim said angrily. "You're hurting him." Denny must have already been in the house when they arrived, he realized, he had probably been hiding in one of the other bedrooms, and they hadn't even thought to check the house. He cursed himself. He hadn't expected that Denny had even thought about Penny since he hadn't cared about his family in years, and he definitely hadn't expected him to show up here as he hadn't mentioned her to him when they had talked the day before. Stupid, stupid, stupid! But this was his grandmother's house. Was there no place left in the world that he could go to where he could feel safe and not have to check under the beds for bad guys?

Tony was clawing at the strong arm around his neck, his breathing sounding more and more labored every second.

"Give me the box, Johnny," Denny said. "Or I swear to god, I will kill him."

"No," Tim said. "If you kill him, I'll kill you. Denny, let him go, or I'll shoot. I mean it."

Denny smirked at him. "I'm your brother, Johnny, you won't shoot me. You don't have it in you."

Tim shook his head. "You're wrong, Denny. You may be my brother, but you're also a serial rapist and killer who's right now holding a gun to one of my best friends, whereas Tony – though it's hard to remember sometimes – is a good person. Someone who believes in helping rather than hurting, and the world needs all of those it can find. Don't think you can make me choose between the two of you. Because I will choose him."

"What happened to family comes first and we're brothers forever and all that other crap you were spouting in the car last night?" Denny asked. "No, you won't shoot me."

"Family comes in a lot of different shapes. Brothers can be made." Tim's voice broke a little. "You loved me once, Denny, I know you did. And so help me, I still love you. If you can still feel just a tiny bit of what you felt about me when we were kids, if you still love me, just a smidgen, then you will not force me to shoot you. You will not make me go through life knowing that I have killed my own brother. You will not do that to me. Please, Denny. Love me enough not to do that. Let Tony go."

The grip around Tony's neck lessened a little as Denny seemed to hesitate. He obviously hadn't expected his brother to react like this. But his eyes kept wandering of their own violation to the puzzle box by Tim's feet. Tim suddenly realized that Denny didn't have a choice. Getting that box was a compulsion for him. He could see it in his fevered eyes. Denny could no more give up that box than he could give up breathing. And he would kill both Tony and Tim if that was what it took to get to it. If he had to choose between that box and his brother's life, the box would win. That realization hit Tim like a punch in the stomach. He had said it many times and thought it even more times, but it wasn't until this moment that it hit home for real. It truly was a ruthless serial killer that stood in front of him. It wasn't his brother.

"No, don't!" he shouted as he saw the arm tighten around Tony's neck again, cutting off the air supply, making Tony gasp uselessly as he tried to break free. Denny's gun started to move towards Tim. "Wait!" Tim called. "Wait. I'll give you the box."

Denny looked surprised. He obviously hadn't expected Tim to give in so quickly. "Really?"

"Yes, really." Tim holstered his gun and bent down slowly, keeping his eyes on Denny. He saw Tony giving him an angry stare even through the lack of oxygen. He picked up the puzzle box and held it out. "Let Tony go, please."

Denny moved forward, Tony shuffling with him as best as he could, but he was then struck with the logistic problem of wanting to hold more things than he had hands. He slowly put away his gun, tucking it into his waistband, keeping his eyes warily on Tim the whole time, and then reached out and took the puzzle box, tucking it under his arm. At the same time he pushed Tony away and into Tim. Tim caught Tony, but stumbled backwards as the extra weight crashed into him, almost falling over the hope chest, but with an impressive balancing act he managed to stay upright. Denny took off running the moment he had let go of Tony. Tim could hear his feet pounding down the corridor for the main stairs.

_'I can catch him,' _he thought as he quickly lowered the wheezing Tony to the floor. "Are you okay?" he asked worriedly. Tony gave him a shaky thumbs up and motioned for him to get going.

Tim practically threw himself down the backstairs. He knew this was a shorter way down to the front door, though not by much, and Denny had the lead. He skidded thought the kitchen at a breakneck speed, cut through the dining room and exited into the foyer, seeing Denny halfway through and heading for the front door. With an unarticulated cry he sped up even more for the last few steps and then launched himself at his brother. Denny only had time to half turn around to see him coming, so Tim barreled into him from the side with arms outreached to wrap around him as they crashed to the floor.

Denny lost his grip on the puzzle box, which went skidding across the marbled foyer floor, bounced off the table leg of a side table and came to a stop in the shadows underneath the table. "No!" he cried, reaching out uselessly for it. Tim was wrestling with him and had during his lack of attention turned him on his stomach and was pulling his arms behind his back. When he realized that he was about to be handcuffed, he started fighting back. "No!" he shouted again, bucking to get his brother off, trying to turn around, to break his arms out of Tim's grip, but Tim was too well trained for situations like these. In a matter of seconds he had Denny's arms securely cuffed behind his back.

"No, Johnny," Denny sobbed with despair, still staring at the puzzle box, now far out of his reach. "Please, don't."

McGee sat back, one hand still firmly on Denny's cuffed hands, keeping his arms still. He took a big, shaky breath and tried to order his brain to make some sense again. He needed to check on Tony, he needed to call Gibbs, and he needed to keep Denny secure, all at the same time.

He took Denny's gun and slid it away from them when he heard a noise behind him. Reaching for his own gun he aimed it one-handedly back towards the dining room door, but quickly lowered it again when he saw Tony come stumbling through, one hand clutching the door jamb to help keep him upright.

"Oh, good. You're alive," McGee said, relieved.

"Yeah, right back at ya," Tony said hoarsely as he put his back to the wall and slid down to sit on the floor.

"You okay?" McGee asked.

"Peachy," Tony rasped. "Nothing a little ice cream won't cure."

"Uh-huh," McGee said unconvinced.

"What about him?" Tony asked, nodding at Denny who was still bucking fruitlessly under Tim, moaning frustrated when he couldn't free himself.

McGee looked down at his brother again, and frowned. "He's good," he said. "I have to call Gibbs."

xxx

Backup had arrived quickly in the form of two patrol officers who had put Denny in the back of their squad car for safe keeping until other transportations could be made. After that, Gibbs and Ziva, the ambulance and the FBI showed up, in that order.

McGee had been keeping Tony company until the rest of the team showed up, then he drew himself away, going back into Penny's house, where every single light had been turned on as forensic personnel was going through the house. He wandered aimlessly around the foyer for a while, looking at the evidence of his scuffle with his brother. He wanted to start cleaning up, put things back in their place and such, to hide what had happened here from his grandmother, but he knew it had to be photographed and logged first. Besides, Penny wouldn't be home for a long time, he would have plenty of time to put everything right. Not that he wouldn't tell his grandmother what had happened, of course, but he didn't want her to have to see it. At least there was no blood. At least he wouldn't have that on his consciousness whenever he visited this house in the future.

"Agent McGee?" an FBI tech called to him. "We're finished with this now, if you want to take it." She was standing by the side table with her camera in one hand, pointing at the puzzle box with her other.

"Okay, thanks," he said. He went over there and picked the box up. Suddenly he couldn't take his eyes off of it. It felt so heavy in his arms, as if it held the 13 bodies of the women Denny had murdered. A body count that could've gone up tonight. Denny had almost killed Tony, because of this box.

"You okay?"

McGee flinched and turned around. Gibbs was standing behind him, looking at him with that searching look that was so hard to hide from. "Yeah, Boss. I'm good," he said, but that wasn't completely true. He felt disconnected and washed out and slightly out of faze, as if the rest if the world was just something floating by in the corner of his eye.

Gibbs frowned, but didn't call him on it. "Come on, it's time to go," he said, putting a hand on McGee's shoulder, applying just a little bit of pressure to encourage movement. When McGee started following him out, Gibbs briefly squeezed the shoulder comfortingly before dropping his hand away. "You did good work today, Tim," he said.

McGee nodded bleakly. "I know," he said, but he didn't look like he felt it.

Tony was sitting in the back of the open ambulance with a blanket around his shoulders, loudly arguing for why he didn't need to go to the hospital. The bruises on his neck looked like black shadows against the stark interior light from the ambulance. The EMT looked less than convinced, but with Ziva standing next to them with her arms crossed over her chest and a grim look on her face, he apparently agreed that with the voice volume Tony was currently displaying, there couldn't be much damage to his windpipe.

Gibbs, however, wasn't so easily discouraged. "DiNozzo, stop being a baby and go to the hospital. Ziva, take his car and go with him. If he's not dying, meet us back at the Yard when you're through."

"Right," Ziva nodded, letting her arms down.

Looking over Ziva's shoulder McGee saw Fornell leading Denny over to a prison transport van and suddenly he realized that this was it. Denny was going back to prison, never to be let out again, never to be seen again. Without really thinking about it he thrust the puzzle box into Ziva's hands and started running towards the van. "Wait!" he called. "Wait!"

Denny stopped and turned around, waiting for him, Fornell hovering behind his back. Tim came to a full stop in front of his brother and for a moment they just stood there, looking at each other. For the first time, Tim realized that he was several inches taller than his big brother. He had probably outgrown him a long time ago.

Without really knowing why he put his arms around Denny and hugged him. Because once they had been brothers. Once they had had a life together. And once… once that had been a good life.

Denny, with his hands chained behind his back, couldn't hug back, but he did relax his neck and tilted his head down to rest on his brother's shoulder.

"Please don't run away again," Tim said. "Please, just stay where you are and be good. If you write to me, I promise to write you back."

Denny pulled away to look Tim in the eyes. "I won't write you, Tim. I'm not your family anymore."

McGee was surprised to hear Denny call him Tim instead of Johnny, but when he looked at Denny he realized he was right. They might be blood kin, but they weren't family anymore. Tim had lived two thirds of his life without his brother by his side, and even with the horrible baggage he had carried around, he had made a good life for himself.

"Take care of yourself, little brother," Denny said as he climbed aboard the prison transport.

"Bye," Tim said quietly as the doors closed.

Turning around he saw his team huddled together, scrutinizing him. Squaring his shoulders he started back towards them. Gibbs left the huddle and met him halfway. He put his hand on McGee's back to change his direction.

"Come on, Tim," he said. "Let's go talk to your folks."

xxx

When he walked through the doors of the safe house, his family rose from the couch where they'd been sitting watching TV and turned to him expectantly. He looked at all of their faces and then he said, "It's over. We caught him."

His mother put a hand over her quivering mouth. He could see a thousand questions in her eyes, but it was as if she understood that he was too exhausted to answer any of them. His father looked as grim as ever, not even a twitch betraying what he might be feeling.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" his mother asked, and he nodded, giving her a tiny smile.

"So what now?" Sarah asked.

Tim shrugged. "Now we go back to our lives and pretend the last three days never happened. Nothing has changed. Not really." He looked right at his father when he said the last statement.

"You're free to return to your homes," Gibbs said. "Admiral, Agent Dorneget is waiting to drive you home. Sarah, you can catch a ride with me and McGee."

"Actually, we've talked about that," Sarah said, shooting a look at her parents. "I've decided to go home with Mom and Dad for a few days. We still have a lot to talk about."

"Can't you come, too, Tim?" Alice asked.

Tim looked quickly at Gibbs, who nodded minimally. "We haven't closed the case yet, but I'll come see you this weekend," he said. He felt that he needed a day or two to himself before he went head to head with his family. He needed to digest the events for himself first.

So he kissed his mother, hugged his sister and nodded at his father and sent them home.

Then he went back to work.

xxx

The puzzle box stood on the work table in Abby's lab, the whole team gathered around it. Even Ducky had come up to see what was so important to a man that when he broke out of prison, instead of hightailing it to a safe location he had made himself known to his brother, who also happened to be a federal agent. That was not normal behavior.

"Do you remember how to open it?" Abby asked.

"I think so," McGee said, his hands hovering uncertainly above the box. He started sliding the boards in a long remembered pattern, made a mistake, started at the beginning again. Soon he heard the click that signaled that the lock was open. Reverently he opened the lid.

The content looked more like the treasure chest of a small child than the hoard of a bloodthirsty serial killer. A ticket stub from a theater play, a half-used lipstick, a green button, a silver teaspoon, a bookmark with a picture of a cat, a souvenir thimble from Florida, a single earring, a pencil – slightly chewed at the top, a blue barrette, a coaster, a pair of tweezers, a lighter and a small pink stuffed bunny, about four inches high.

"It's his poetry!" Abby exclaimed. "Remember, Tim? The poems. He couldn't keep his trophies with him, so he wrote about them instead."

But Tim wasn't listening to her. "This was Elena's," he said hoarsely, picking up the bunny, holding it gently in his palm. "I recognize it. But how do we match the rest of the things to the victims?"

"I could try and get some fingerprints," Abby said, but she sounded uncertain. "Or DNA. If you think it's important."

McGee was staring at all the small everyday items. "I can't believe he broke out of prison for this. It seems so insignificant."

"He's sick, Timothy," Ducky said. "Otherwise he wouldn't have needed to take these things in the first place."

"So what do we do with it now?" Abby asked.

"Only thing we can do," Gibbs said grimly. "Bag it and tag it."

xxx

Before they went back up to the bullpen, Abby had had some good news for McGee. The physical evidence showed conclusively that the woman who had been attacked in Georgetown had been so by her husband. Denny hadn't been involved at all. And though McGee was still saddened on the woman's behalf that she would have to live through such an ordeal, it was a weight off his shoulders, knowing that Denny's escape hadn't cost any lives. They had been able to stop him before he hurt another woman.

It had only been three days since Denny's escape had turned his life upside-down, but Tim felt as if he'd lived through a month at least. He was tired on the brink of exhaustion and emotionally drained. But somehow, strangely enough, he felt good, too. Good things had come out of this experience, too. He'd reconnected with Harlan, whom he had missed for so long. His mother had finally decided to liberate herself from his father's way of living, and get on with her life. 22 years after the catastrophe had torn his family apart, it now felt as if they finally had taken the final step of the process of moving on with their lives. And even though they would have to live with the fall out of Sarah finding out that they had lied to her for a long time – his sister was well known for holding grudges, after all –, it felt good to know that she finally knew the truth. There would be no more lying in his family. And though he still wished that the truth had never come out at NCIS, it felt good not to have to lie there anymore either. Though he expected that he hadn't seen the full ramifications about this at work. Vance, he knew, was itching for a long discussion about why the information was missing from his file. But maybe things would work out just fine there too.

He had finally had a chance to speak with Denny, something he'd been wanting to do since he was 12. Not that he had been given any real answers from his brother, but just the act of being able to ask the questions had been cathartic. He had a new face on his brother now, too, not just wisps of remembrance. Actually seeing his face had really hammered in how much time had passed since the murders, and how much his life had changed. But he had heard his brother's voice and looked into his eyes and made a connection. It was a far cry from what they had shared as kids, and he knew that it wasn't the beginning of a lasting relationship or anything like that. Instead, it had been a good bye. A good bye he hadn't been given last time around.

The only real problem remaining was his father. Or more accurately, his father's stubbornness. How would he ever break through that wall? Would they ever be able to see eye to eye? Understand each other? Or was it a hopeless case? Should he stop caring?

"McGee!"

He jerked and looked up at Gibbs, standing in front of him. "Boss?"

"Go home, McGee. Get some rest. You've earned it."

"Yeah, okay." He was actually quite grateful for the dismissal. He wanted to be alone for a while. And maybe get some proper sleep.

"Hey, Probie! Wait up!" Tony caught up with him by the elevator door. "I just wanted to say, good work today. Horrible circumstances, but good work. And…Thank you. You saved my life."

McGee smiled bleakly. "Well, I guess it was my turn." The joke was weak, but the sentiment was appreciated and Tony smiled back at him.

Then Tony scuffed his feet and appeared uneasy. "So, uh… Tim. What you said about… you know, about brothers…"

"Yeah, no," McGee hurried to interrupt him. "I was just trying to throw him out of loop, you know… Trying to get him to…"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, I know. I know." Tony assured him. "Just… well… it was a good thing, that thing you said. And I… I… you know."

"Uh-huh, sure," McGee nodded vigorously. "Yeah, no problem, Tony."

"Good. So we're…?"

"We're good."

"Good. Well. Good night, then."

"Good night, Tony."

At her desk, Ziva rolled her eyes. "Boys!" she mumbled.

xxx

Coming home, Tim closed the door and locked it behind him. He didn't bother turning on any lights. Instead, with his back to the door, he sank down on the floor. He pulled his knees up, wrapped his arms around them and buried his face in his arms.

Then he cried.

xxx

_"I can't do it, Denny. I'm afraid."_

_"There's nothing to be afraid of, Johnny. I'm right here. I won't let you go until you tell me to."_

_"You promise?"_

_"I promise."_

_"Okay, let's try it."_

_"Okay, Johnny. Just lie down in the water and move your arms and legs like I showed you. I won't let go."_

_"Like this?"_

_"Just like that. You're doing fine, Johnny. You're doing great."_

_"I think you can let go now, Denny."_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"I'm sure. Let go… I'm doing it! Look at me, I'm doing it! I'm swimming!"_

_"You sure are, little brother. Now turn around and swim back to me. You can swim right into my arms."_

_"Thanks Denny! You're the best brother in the whole world!"_

_"Nuh-huh, not possible. _You_ are the best brother in the whole world."_

_"We are the bestest brothers ever! And we will be together forever, won't we?"_

_"Forever and ever."_

_"I love you, Denny."_

_"I love you too, little brother."_

xxx

TBC…

Just a little epilogue left, then I'll get out of your hair!


	16. Chapter 16

**Epilogue**

Tim had an old tin box in the bottommost drawer of his dresser. He had had it for a long time, for so long actually, that he couldn't remember when he'd gotten it. It had always just been there. The box had at one point held cookies, but had during his childhood gotten so scratched and dented that he could barely read the brand name anymore.

Today, he took it out of the dresser, for the first time since he had moved into this apartment. He sat on the bed, clutching it in his hands. He could see now, that it was not unlike Denny's box. Just childhood treasures, nothing of value, but very valuable to him anyway. He hadn't opened the box in years, probably not since he was 15, but he had dutifully brought it with him everywhere he had moved. Even when he had lived in tiny shared dorm rooms or had sublet little rat holes off campus, the box had gone with him. But he hadn't opened it.

The lid was slightly stuck, he had to pry at it and force it open. When he was really little, he'd mostly kept pretty rocks, marbles, bird feathers and such in the box, but those had been cleaned out after the murders. Now, it was mostly photos.

He smiled a little as he looked through them. Some he hadn't even remembered that he had, but now that he saw them, so much came back to him. These were the things he had treasured when he was 12. These were the things he had lost. He and Denny in a swimming pool, squinting in the sunlight, smiling at the camera. Denny with Sarah on his lap on Christmas morning, helping the toddler open her presents. An eight-year-old Denny reading comics to his two-year-old brother. Denny at the hospital, helping his little brother hold their newborn sister for the first time.

Tim kept all of his memories of the life he'd had before in here, not just Denny. There were other photos too. He and Oliver in the tree house. He and Oliver in scout uniforms. All of his friends at his 12th birthday party. None of them had stood by him. All of them were lost to him.

At the bottom of the box was his most secret photo, the one no one had ever known he had kept. On the back the year 1987 was scribbled. It was summer, so it was about 18 months before the murders started, almost two years before Elena died. It had been taken in their backyard; Oliver's family had come over for a barbecue. In the photo, he and Oliver were sitting on one side of a picnic table, close together, laughing at a joke Oliver's dad – who was taking the photo – had just told. Alice was standing at the end of the table, holding Sarah in her arms. Sarah was two and a half years old and the picture of health. The cancer had not yet afflicted her. His mother smiled the radiant smile Tim remembered from his childhood as she looked at her children. He hadn't seen her smile like that in 22 years. On the other side of the table sat Denny and Elena, side by side, their shoulders touching. They were smiling, comfortable in each other's company. His father stood behind them, his hands resting on Denny's shoulders, smiling proudly. So much more carefree back then. So much more loving. It had all been torn asunder. No one in that photo had lived happily ever after.

Tim still couldn't believe that Denny had murdered Elena. They had been friends, they had all been family. Why had he destroyed that? Why had he chosen Elena? It was just one of the many questions he would never get an answer to. One of the many things that still gnawed at his brain late at night.

Denny had ruined so much, for so many people. But maybe there were some wounds Tim could help heal.

xxx

Tim stood nervously on the front porch of a nice suburban house in Oregon. He had insisted on doing this on his own, but now he was questioning his own judgment. But it was too late to turn back now.

He rang the doorbell and waited. The door opened almost immediately. Inside stood a man of his own age and height with a little girl on his arm. "Yes?" he said, smiling inquiringly.

"Oliver Gale?" Tim asked needlessly. Even though it had been 22 years, his best friend was easily recognizable. He had dark brown hair and green eyes and was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

"Yes, that's me. How can I help you?" Still smiling invitingly.

"I'm Special Agent Timothy McGee with the NCIS." He flashed his badge.

"Oh?" Oliver frowned. "Is this… is this about Denny Langston?"

"Yes," Tim said. "In a way."

"You'd better come in then, Agent McGee." Oliver stepped aside and waved McGee into a cozy, but toy-cluttered living room. He put his daughter down on the floor, where the child immediately found a yellow tractor, which she started driving around on the carpet, making engine noises as she went.

McGee looked around the room. His old friend had obviously made a good life for himself. The room was maybe not furbished with expensive furniture and the latest electronics, but there were plenty of memories and family life. He saw Oliver's wedding photo, photos of children and parents. People Tim didn't recognize and older versions of some he had known. His heart skipped a beat when he saw himself in the midst. A photo of himself and Oliver in little league uniforms, arms around each other's shoulders and grinning madly at the camera. He had the same photo in his tin box, but he had never dared to display it.

"Sorry about that," Oliver said, gesturing to his daughter and the noise she was making. "My wife's out grocery shopping with our oldest, so I have to keep an eye on her while we talk. Please, sit down."

"It's fine," McGee promised. "I don't mind. How old is she?"

"Almost two." Oliver smiled proudly. "A little bundle of pure energy. Do you want some coffee or something?" He gestured for Tim to sit down on a yellow couch.

"No, thank you," Tim said, sitting down. "I'm not staying long."

"Okay," Oliver said, sitting down in an armchair across from Tim. "So, what did you want to talk to me about?"

"As you know," Tim began, "Dennis Langston escaped from prison ten days ago. I was part of the team that tracked him down and rearrested him. In the following investigation we found some things that he collected from his victims 22 years ago. His trophies."

"Elena's bunny," Oliver said immediately.

"Yes," Tim said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a plastic evidence bag with the pink stuffed bunny in it. He squeezed it briefly in his hand before handing it over.

Oliver took it and held it reverently in his hand. "I knew he had taken it. No one ever believed me, but I knew that he had it. I never thought I'd see this again. Can I take it out of the bag?"

"Of course," Tim said, nodding. "It's yours now."

Oliver took the stuffed animal out and held it in his hand, staring at it. "I gave her this," he said. "A couple of weeks before she died. I won it at a carnival, at an air riffle stand. I thought it was lame and too girly. I was gonna throw it away, but a friend of mine convinced me I should give it to Elena. To earn brownie points for future use, I think he said."

"Yes, I remember," Tim said, then biting his tongue. He hadn't meant to say that.

Oliver looked up sharply. "You remember? What do you mean—" Then his face softened and he turned his head to the side, regarding Tim closely. "John? Johnny! Is it really you?"

"Yes," McGee said nervously. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't—"

But Oliver was smiling. "I gave it to her that evening. She was really happy about it, she thought it was sweet. She put it on her bedside table and named it Ollie, after me. Then she hugged me. I was at the age where I thought hugging was lame, so I didn't let people hug me that often. So that was the last time I ever hugged her. Then she made us popcorn and we watched my favorite movie together. That evening has been such a precious memory for me since she died. And I owe it to you. It was you who told me to give the bunny to her."

"I'm glad," Tim said truthfully. "It's important to remember the good times. I've learned that the hard way."

"John," Oliver said wistfully. "I can't believe you are really here. I've thought so much about you over the years. We treated you so badly, all of us, all the kids in the neighborhood. It took me a while to realize that. I was just so mad about the whole situation. I hit you – really hurt you. We beat you up, when it wasn't your fault. We just couldn't see that back then. I've always been ashamed about the way I treated you. I'm so sorry."

Tim shook his head. "I never held it against you. You were a kid and you were hurting. And I was sorry too. I felt guilty, even though I had no reason too. That took me a while to figure out too."

"I lost a sister," Oliver said shaking his head slightly, "but you lost a brother too. We should've bonded, we should've supported each other. We were in the same boat, but I couldn't see that back then. Too immature, I supposed. And too hurt. But I've thought of you a lot since I came to my senses. I've missed you. I actually tried to find you, a few years ago, but I couldn't. I had no idea you had changed your name."

The little girl came and leaned against her father's leg, looking at the toy in his hand, reaching out and patting it. "Bunny!" she said happily.

"That's right, Ellie. A bunny. It belonged to your aunt Elena. She would've adored you."

"Ellie?" Tim asked.

"Yeah," Oliver said. "Named for Elena, of course. I have a son too, five years old. He's called John."

"John?" Tim asked surprised.

"Yeah," Oliver smiled. "Named for the bravest boy I've ever known. The boy who put my sister's murderer in jail. Twice now! But you're not John anymore. I'm sorry, I forgot what name you introduced yourself by."

"Timothy," Tim said. "Tim."

"Well, Tim," Oliver said, stretching out his hand for Tim to shake. "Welcome to my home. Won't you please stay for dinner? I know my family would love to meet you. And we have a lot of catching up to do."

Tim smiled, feeling a slight burn behind his eyelids. "I'd love that."

THE END

xxx

**A/N: **Phew, am I glad that's over! Another monkey off my back! Hope you all enjoyed the story and that it wasn't too melodramatic for you. When I get in that mood, there's just no stopping me. Thank you so much for all the wonderful reviews and thank you so much for reading!


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